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)

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.

Amit Relan, Co-Founder and CEO, mFilterIt

On AI Appreciation Day, it's worth recognizing that AI's greatest contribution isn't automation, it's transformation. Its real value lies in helping businesses make better decisions, faster, by connecting intelligence across fragmented systems, people, and processes. The result goes beyond operational efficiency: stronger outcomes, greater resilience, and the confidence to navigate change rather than react to it. At mFilterIt, we have seen this firsthand when AI orchestrates rather than simply automates, businesses gain the upper hand in their operations: their digital investments stay protected, their decisions turn sharper and real-time, and their growth becomes harder to disrupt. But technology alone is never the answer. AI brings speed, scale, and precision; people bring context, ethics, creativity, and judgment. The future will belong to organizations that unite the strengths of both. Together, human intelligence and AI won't just improve business, they will redefine what's possible and create wonders we have yet to imagine.

Saurav Kasera, Co-Founder, CLIRNET

Artificial Intelligence is redefining healthcare at a pace we've never witnessed before not by replacing clinicians, but by amplifying their ability to make faster, more informed decisions. From accelerating access to medical evidence and personalized learning to reducing administrative burden, AI is enabling healthcare professionals to spend more time where it matters most: improving patient outcomes. However, the true measure of AI's success will not be the sophistication of the technology, but the trust it earns. Responsible AI adoption demands transparency, clinical validation, strong data governance, and human oversight at every stage. As the healthcare ecosystem embraces this transformation, organisations that combine technological innovation with scientific credibility and ethical responsibility will be the ones shaping the future of care. AI is no longer an emerging trend—it is becoming foundational to the next era of healthcare delivery and medical education.

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.

Vimal Nair, Chief Growth Officer at Krisp

Artificial intelligence has rapidly evolved from a breakthrough technology to core enterprise infrastructure, reshaping how businesses communicate, collaborate, and operate. On World AI Appreciation Day, it's worth recognizing that AI's biggest impact is no longer in standalone applications, but in technologies that integrate naturally into everyday work.

Voice AI is one of the clearest examples of this shift. As hybrid work, global customer support, and distributed teams make real-time communication a business imperative, voice AI has evolved from a nice-to-have to an essential part of enterprise operations.

At Krisp, we're seeing this firsthand. Our AI processes over a billion minutes of voice conversations every month-removing background noise for clearer calls, capturing meeting notes without interrupting conversations, and enabling real-time accent conversion so global support teams can communicate more effectively across markets. As enterprises move from experimenting with AI to relying on it for everyday operations, the next phase will be defined by AI that enhances communication, strengthens security, and integrates seamlessly into the workflows teams already use.

Dr Sarath Kumar, Chief Technology Officer, ACT Fibernet

As AI becomes more accessible, competitive advantage will increasingly come from how effectively organisations apply it to solve real customer problems. The next phase of AI won't be defined only by more powerful models, but by experiences that are intuitive, trustworthy and seamlessly integrated into everyday life.

For these experiences to deliver consistently, intelligent digital infrastructure becomes essential. From connected homes and entertainment to work and learning, AI relies on secure, resilient and high-performance networks that can support real-time interactions. At ACT Fibernet, we see our role as enabling this foundation while ensuring technology remains transparent, reliable and centred around people. Responsible AI should augment human decision-making, not replace it, helping build digital experiences that earn trust and create meaningful value.

Prasanna Nirmal Kumar, Chief Credit Officer, axio

Across enterprises, one of the biggest shifts has been embedding AI at the core of business strategy. In financial services, this shift is reshaping outcomes: lending decisions have become smarter, fraud detection sharper, customer experiences more personalized, and access has expanded to underserved segments that were previously overlooked.

Companies are investing seriously in ensuring AI decisions remain transparent and reliable. In a highly regulated industry such as financial services, this requires strong governance, explainable systems, robust data security, and compliance with regulatory standards.

At axio, we believe responsible AI has the potential to make finance considerably more inclusive and more attuned to individual customer needs. By combining advanced technology, data-driven insights, and deep industry expertise, we can help close the credit access gap and equip individuals with the tools required to make sound financial decisions.

Rupesh Kumar, Chief Product & Technology Officer, WeWork India

At WeWork India, we see AI as an enabler of better workplace decisions and experiences. We are embedding AI across the workplace lifecycle, from site selection and demand forecasting to occupancy and churn prediction, while also enhancing the member experience through Digital Keycard access, smart bookings, and personalised journeys on our mobile app. The same shift is transforming how we build. AI has compressed our product engineering cycles dramatically, letting us ship at a speed that was not possible before, and has driven step-change efficiency across our operations, sales and finance workflows.

Over the last three years, we have also built a spatial analytics platform that uses privacy-compliant computer vision and anonymised, aggregated data to understand how our spaces are actually used. These insights help us optimise layouts, redesign existing centres, inform the development of new workspaces, and move towards predictive building operations, where occupancy intelligence can optimise meeting room utilisation, lighting, and climate control. Our recent report, AI and the Future of Flexible Workspaces, published in partnership with Redseer, reinforces this shift. The study found that 95% of Indian enterprises expect AI adoption to accelerate, AI hiring has grown sixfold since 2019, and India's AI talent pool now exceeds 700,000 professionals. As AI reshapes the way organisations work, we believe its greatest impact will be in creating workplaces that are more adaptive, intelligent, efficient, and ultimately, more human-centric.

Heather Dawe, Chief Data Scientist & Head of Responsible AI, UST

There are a lot of examples I could use here but the one of the most striking is that AI has become a tool for building AI. Working with frontier models has collapsed the time between an idea and a working method. Ideas for new ML techniques that would once have sat unexplored because the resource requirements were too high can now be built, evaluated, and either discarded or developed in days. Some of our own novel approaches exist because of this.

The same acceleration applies to governance. In UST Prism and our wider AI governance services we've been able to make assurance, evaluation and oversight of AI practical at the pace the technology now moves. That matters because, without it, governance is often treated as an afterthought. This is still one of the main reasons many AI proof of concepts never reach production.

Ritwij Kulkarni, Vice President & Regional GM, Process Automation, Honeywell Technologies, India & APAC

The greatest contribution of Artificial Intelligence to the process automation industry is its ability to connect the physical and digital worlds in practical ways. Process industries have generated decades of data, and AI is turning that data into real-time insights that improve how critical infrastructure is designed, operated and maintained. What makes this shift significant is that AI is taking process automation beyond fixed rules toward greater operational intelligence, preserving workforce knowledge, driving efficiency, enhancing energy resilience, and creating new growth opportunities. AI also helps operators work faster where skilled talent is scarce, learning from experience to improve decision support over time. At Honeywell Process Automation, AI is a catalyst for better outcomes. By combining deep domain expertise with AI-enabled platforms like Honeywell Forge, we help industries improve reliability, resilience and sustainability while unlocking greater value from operational data, connecting people and assets to create smarter, more autonomous operations."