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

Manav Subodh- Founder of 1M1B ( One Million for One Billion)- An AI focused skilling organization

AI could add $1.7 trillion to India’s economy by 2035. But that number will mean very little if our youth are left watching the revolution from the sidelines, or entering it without the safeguards to shape it responsibly. On AI Appreciation Day, my message is simple: India’s AI future has to be applied, local, secure and youth-led. A young person in Bulandshahr should be able to use AI to map solar jobs while understanding how local data is collected and protected. A girl in a government school in Sitapur should use it to imagine a career in STEM without being limited by biased algorithms. A small-town graduate in Raichur should use responsible AI to solve real problems for local businesses, while building systems people can trust. The urgent mission ahead is to build a bridge from skills to work, from ethical technology to dignity, and from ambition to action, with young people helping define the rules of India’s AI future.

Dr Badri Gomatam, Group Chief Technology Officer, STL

AI Appreciation Day observes the rapid progress of AI that is changing the face of digital infrastructure. With AI models becoming more sophisticated and expansive, the demand for high-performance, low-latency and energy-efficient AI datacentres is growing at an unprecedented pace. AI datacentres are becoming the backbone of the digital economy, enabling compute, storage and connectivity required to enable next-generation applications and services.

STL is helping enable this technological evolution by building optical connectivity and digital infrastructure solutions that support the evolving needs of future-ready AI datacentres. Our focus is to ensure seamless data movement, scalability, and operational efficiency across increasingly complicated AI workloads. As businesses move ahead in their AI goals, success will depend on intelligence of models and the infrastructure that supports the AI. The future of AI will be grounded in resilient, scalable, and sustainable networks that we, at STL are committed to help build.

Anjaiah Surgi, CTO, Hindware Limited (Somany Impresa Group)

For us, AI Appreciation Day is about how much closer AI has brought us to our dealers and customers, not just our systems. It is also a reminder that the greatest value of AI lies in deploying it responsibly to build trust, improve experiences, and empower people.

At Hindware, our starting point has been customer and channel experience. An AI-powered email bot now reads and triages every inbound complaint around the clock, and we're piloting a voice bot for conversational complaint registration. On the finance side, AI-driven dealer receivables tracking sends real-time invoice alerts and cash-discount nudges over email and WhatsApp, directly improving our working capital position. Across our people processes, AI, from an HR engagement assistant to AI-assisted resume screening, is helping us scale service without scaling headcount at the same pace.

Looking ahead, the next phase is about turning today's alerts and dashboards into action: AI agents that don't just flag a dealer receivable risk but initiate the follow-up, and sales intelligence tools that make every dealer touchpoint smarter. For a consumer-facing business like ours, the next two to three years will be less about adopting AI and more about making it invisible, just part of how every dealer, customer, and field team interaction quietly gets faster, more responsive, and more intuitive.

Tinku Acharya, Founder and Chairman, Videonetics

AI Appreciation Day is not just about celebrating algorithms but about recognizing AI's ability to transform vast volumes of data into timely, meaningful decisions. India is no longer just a consumer of AI, but we are building, deploying, and scaling AI solutions across some of the world's most complex operating environments. Our country has the talent, the scale, and an increasingly strong ecosystem of homegrown innovation to solve challenges that truly matter. Today, AI is quietly powering many critical aspects of our businesses including command centres that help manage our cities and intelligent systems enforcing traffic regulations on our highways to the critical infrastructure that millions of people rely on every day.

In the domain of Video Intelligence, every camera captures an enormous amount of visual data, but it is AI that turns this data into actionable intelligence, enabling organizations to move from simply responding to incidents to anticipating and preventing them. As AI continues to evolve, its real value will be measured not by the sophistication of the technology itself, but by the impact it creates by making our environments safer, operations smarter, and decision-making more informed. At Videonetics, we remain committed to advancing AI-powered Video Intelligence that delivers purposeful innovation and creates lasting value for enterprises, governments, and public infrastructure.

Jason Sabin, CTO, DigiCert

The AI adoption story has already been told. The next chapter is about trust. Our July 7 research found that AI adoption is accelerating, but trust is still catching up: nearly eight in ten organizations have already experienced AI-related security incidents or vulnerabilities, and nearly half still lack full visibility into how AI reaches its decisions. The organizations that succeed with AI will be those that invest not only in innovation, but in the identity, governance, and accountability that make AI trustworthy.”