India Today Conclave 2023: Stability AI COO Ren Ito says generative AI can revolutionize education in India

At the India Today Conclave 2023 in New Delhi, Stability AI COO Ren Ito said that generative AI could revolutionise India's education sector. The COO also said that when it comes to next-gen AI technologies, open-source models must be preferred.

In Short
•     At the India Today Conclave 2023, Stability AI COO Ren Ito spoke about generative AI
•     Ito noted that next-gen AI can solve a lot of issues in India.
•     In particular Ito highlighted education and health sectors can benefit greatly from AI.

Generative AI is the talk of the town. But what is it? The COO of Stability AI, a company that is at the forefront of emerging technology through its AI image generator called Stable Diffusion, explained it all at the India Today Conclave 2023 in India. At the conclave, Ito agreed that generative AI technologies like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT can sound scary. But, he said, they are also the beginning of something "exciting" that has the potential to change the world as we know it.

Talking about generative AI, Ito says that it is different from previous versions of AI because it can learn from a data set and then can create something new. This is because, says Ito, "generative AI is trying to understand the relationship between data points."

Given that Ito was talking in Delhi, he highlighted how India can benefit from generative AI. "I think there is potential for India... The (AI) model (can be a sort) of brain buddy," said Ito. "India's student-to-teacher ratio (is low) and (that) means you need more teachers here. But then more than 80 per cent of kids have access to smartphones here. So, you can revolutionize education by bringing AI into it."
At the conclave as Ito spoke, in the background played a film that talked of India and its potential. The exciting bit about the film was that it was composed of images created with new-age AI tools like Stable Diffusion.

This, according to Ito, will mean that companies building AI products will have accountability and transparency. At the same time, according to Ito, the open-source models will allow different companies, organizations, and even countries to better customize the AI models.

In his conversation at the India Today Conclave 2023, Ito agreed that humans would do well to be cautious about AI. But at the same time, there is no need to stop, he said. "This is exciting and scary technology. But instead of stopping the development of the process, there is a need to democratize it. (And) the moment you see existential danger happening in an AI, you reserve the right to stop. This is the way to strike the right balance," he said.