Microsoft President Brad Smith has advocated the need for regulations at the national and international levels for AI. He said that it is not possible to slow the tech pace. This came amid the ongoing debate around AI’s risks and benefits.  

Smith, who also serves as the Vice Chairperson said that AI can do better for the people of India and the world than any other technological advance of this lifetime. Alongside he also added that there is a need to embrace the enormous responsibility that comes with AI and to get it right and we would need laws and regulations both at a national and international level. 

He termed India's freshly minted data protection legislation as "a good law", praised the digital public infrastructure here, and pointed out that India has become one of the most important countries for Microsoft.  

"When you think about Microsoft, India has become one of our most important countries, not just for customers, but for employees and for talent...even in a year where the tech sector in some respects needed to shed some jobs, India grew for Microsoft," Smith said. Microsoft, he pointed out, has more employees here today than it did 12 months ago. 

On the need for global guardrails on AI, he affirmed that laws and regulations will indeed be required. It is pertinent to mention here that over the past months, many global experts and tech leaders have cautioned about the existential threat to humanity from AI, arguing that it needs to be considered a societal risk at par with pandemics and nuclear wars.