AI Appreciation Day 2026: Trust and infrastructure emerge as the next frontier for AI, say experts

Dr Jagpreet Associate Dean, School of Technology Management & Engineering, NMIMS Chandigarh

Responsible AI is not just about building intelligent systems—it is about ensuring that technology remains accountable to the people it serves. As AI becomes an integral part of education, healthcare, governance, and business, we must prioritise transparency, fairness, and ethical decision-making alongside innovation. Equally important is preparing future professionals to use AI responsibly, with critical thinking and human judgment at the core. The true measure of AI's progress will be its ability to augment human potential while upholding trust and societal values.

Sachin Dev Duggal, Founder & CEO of SekondBrain.ai

AI isn't simply about making models safer; it's about ensuring they remain accountable to human values, context, and truth. Intelligence without grounding is simply capability without judgement. As AI becomes embedded in the decisions we make every day, the real challenge isn't building machines that think more like humans, but building systems that help humans think better. In the end, AI's success won't be defined by what it can do on its own, but by how much it empowers people to make better decisions and creates lasting value for society.

Rikant Pittie, CEO & Co-founder, EaseMyTrip

The future of AI will be shaped not just by its capabilities, but by the trust it earns. As organisations embed AI into customer experiences, the focus must remain on transparency, accountability, and keeping people in control of important decisions. Our initiatives, EVA and ChatGPT integration demonstrates how AI can simplify travel discovery and assistance while making the experience more intuitive and personalised. Responsible AI should empower better decision-making, not replace human judgment.

Ravindra Singh, Managing Director, Delcom Telesystems

World AI Appreciation Day is a timely reminder that the true value of artificial intelligence lies not in the technology itself, but in its ability to solve real-world challenges across critical infrastructure sectors. In India's power transmission and distribution ecosystem, where reliability, resilience, and operational continuity are paramount, AI is increasingly becoming a strategic capability rather than an emerging trend.

As utilities accelerate investments in smart grids, digital substations, and modernized infrastructure, they are managing more distributed and interconnected environments than ever before. This calls for systems that can do more than simply record or report incidents after they occur.

AI is helping drive this shift from reactive operations to predictive intelligence. AI-powered video analytics, anomaly detection, edge computing, and intelligent monitoring are enabling utilities to identify potential security threats, equipment failures, and operational disruptions before they escalate into larger incidents. The result is improved situational awareness, faster response times, and more resilient infrastructure.

At Delcom Telesystems, we view AI as an enabler that strengthens the convergence of surveillance, networking, cybersecurity, and operational technologies into a unified infrastructure ecosystem. The organizations that embrace AI-driven intelligence today will be better positioned to build the secure, resilient, and future-ready power networks that India's growth ambitions demand.

Brijesh Agarwal, CEO, Busy Infotech

The real promise of AI for India's MSMEs is not making a small business operate like a large enterprise. It is to remove repetitive work and make complex decisions easier, without taking control away from them. In accounting, AI can help surface errors before they become penalties, suggest the next step in a filing, simplify voucher posting, and make compliance workflows easier to navigate, so a business owner spends less time reacting to problems and more time running the business.

However, adoption will depend on trust. Small businesses need AI that is accurate, explainable, secure and affordable, not a black box making financial decisions on their behalf. At BUSY, our focus is on embedding intelligence into familiar accounting workflows so users gain speed without having to completely change the way they work. AI should support human judgement, not replace it, and its value should ultimately be measured in time saved, errors prevented and better decisions made.

Parag Khurana, Country Manager, India, Barracuda Networks

On AI Appreciation Day, organisations should celebrate not only the possibilities AI creates, but also the steps needed to use it responsibly. Sustainable AI success will depend on treating security, governance and innovation as complementary priorities rather than competing objectives.

Employees are often the first to identify opportunities for AI, bringing new tools into workflows long before formal policies are established. This reflects genuine enthusiasm for innovation, but it can also create blind spots around data protection, compliance and risk management. The challenge is not preventing the use of AI, but ensuring its use aligns with organisational and regulatory requirements.

Forward-looking organisations are responding by developing practical frameworks for responsible AI adoption. This includes understanding which AI tools are being used, setting clear expectations for employees and ensuring sensitive data remains protected. When governance supports innovation rather than restricting it, businesses can create a culture where AI delivers value without introducing unnecessary risk.

Dr. Sanjay Katkar, Joint Managing Director at Quick Heal Technologies

"Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming the nervous system of Digital India. As AI transforms how we work, learn, and innovate, it is also reshaping the cyber threat landscape. Our latest India Cyber Threat Report 2026 highlights how AI-assisted phishing, identity compromise, and data integrity attacks are accelerating, with social engineering emerging as one of the most effective attack vectors. This makes responsible, transparent, and well-governed AI not just an innovation imperative, but a national cybersecurity imperative.

At Quick Heal Technologies Limited, we believe AI should strengthen trust, not compromise it. That belief drives our AI-first cybersecurity innovations, from our patented GoDeep.AI technology to solutions that help combat digital fraud, protect personal data, and defend organisations against external threats such as impersonation and brand abuse. As regulations like the DPDP Act raise the bar for data protection, AI will play an increasingly important role in helping organisations stay secure and compliant.

On this AI Appreciation Day, we celebrate not just what AI can do, but how responsibly we choose to build and use it. The true measure of AI is not how intelligent it becomes, but how effectively it protects people, businesses, and the digital future we are all creating together.

Mr Praveen Joshi, MD and a Founding Member of RSK Business Solutions Pvt Ltd

Every major technology shift gets celebrated before it gets understood. AI is no different. Excitement is easy. Thoughtful adoption is harder, and it matters far more. Intelligence without context is just noise. Speed without accountability creates problems that take years to untangle. The ones that get this right won't necessarily be the companies with the greatest number of models. They will be the companies that ask questions upfront, retain human oversight and develop a system of governance in which people have trust in AI. AI Appreciation Day is a reminder that intelligence alone does not create progress. Can people rely on AI, question it? Use AI to solve problems that genuinely matter? That's the standard worth building toward.

Piyush Goel, Founder & CEO of Beyond Key

What makes Artificial Intelligence valuable is the assistance we receive from it in decision-making, but not the replacement of our decision-making process by AI. If we base our decisions on AI algorithms, the factors that matter most include trusting AI, being able to comprehend AI and having someone to blame for what AI does. Applying AI technologies implies going beyond the current state of affairs and creating technology based on our values, inclusiveness and opportunities for people. These companies realize the importance of AI as an advisor and not as a tool for solving the problems of indecision. AI, at its best, simply gives those qualities more room to do meaningful work. This AI Appreciation, let’s emphasise the importance of responsible AI use.

Prof Roop L. Mahajan- Founding Director, Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, Virginia Tech

AI runs on mathematics, but it survives on thermal management. As AI models grow, heat dissipation is becoming the hard limit on computing, not just chip design. A modern data center spends a large share of its power budget on just moving heat away from silicon. I first saw this challenge emerging decades ago at Bell Labs, and it has only become more acute with the rise of AI. The materials that enable efficient thermal management are now every bit as important as the processors they cool. Graphene is among the most thermally conductive materials known, and remarkably, it can be produced from coal. That has the potential to redefine what coal means for a country like India. Rather than viewing coal solely as a source of energy, we can also see it as a valuable feedstock for advanced thermal management materials -heat spreaders, thermal interface materials, and cooling surfaces—that next-generation AI infrastructure will increasingly depend upon. India possesses abundant coal resources, outstanding engineering talent, and the ambition to lead in this emerging field. On July 16, as we celebrate the remarkable achievements of AI, let us also spare a thought for the physics and the materials science—thatkeep it running.