In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Dalal highlighted the uncertainty surrounding the return on investment (ROI) of these technologies, urging companies to embrace experimentation and avoid rigid financial constraints.

“Don’t worry too much about ROI,” Dalal advised. “ROI is a very effective tool when you know R, which is your return, because investment is fixed, but return is also fixed. Now, technology such as AI or Gen AI is in the stage where you really don’t know the return.” He further emphasised the need for continuous learning and adaptation for employees, stating, “Every one of our employees will have to be in a very different stage of mental hunger of learning for next three years.”

Surya Gummadi, EVP & President of Cognizant Americas, echoed these sentiments, highlighting the shift from AI experimentation to large-scale implementation. “The entire conversation of Davos 2025 is all about AI and the pivot from experimentation to scale.”

Cognizant itself is actively addressing the skills gap in AI by investing heavily in employee training. The company has committed to training 1 million associates in AI and Gen AI technologies, with 2,00,000 already undergoing training programs, Gummadi added.

Below are the excerpts of the interview.

Q: All the conversations that I’ve had with people from the tech world today seem to suggest that 2025 is going to look better than the last year, and all eyes now on what deregulation in the US could potentially mean in terms of opening up more opportunities for the IT sector?

Gummadi: The entire conversation of this event is all about AI and the pivot from experimentation to scale, that has been the theme of Davos 2025. And throughout 2024 majority of our clients were in the experimentation phase. So, we expect, you know, a change in that and in the back half of last year, we started sensing cautious optimism in our clients. And we had four variables at play throughout last year, the US, elections, inflation, interest rates and geopolitical tensions, some of those variables are leveling out. So that gives us a sense of optimism. So overall, I think, it’s all about AI, and pivot of AI from experimentation to scale.

Q: The conversations that I have been having with tech CEOs and they are saying we are not looking at head count reduction, we are in fact looking at a net addition at this point in time, but skills will have to be very different, training programs will have to be done very differently, what is your take and how are you dealing with that?

Dalal: I wrote an article a few weeks back where I sort of said that don’t worry too much about RoI. RoI is a very effective tool when you know R, which is your return, because investment is fixed, but return is also fixed. Now, technology such as AI or Gen AI is in the stage where you really don’t know the return. If you are investing $5, are you going to get $15 back or $20, or $50, you don’t know that. So, you have to remain more agile in terms of thinking even as CFO and say, I bet on the technology and what it can do. Let me not get very fixated on returns, because when you get fixated on returns, you put boundaries to what it can do. And I think we are at a stage where it can do a lot more than all of us can think today is possible in terms of its capability. And that’s what we have seen since first time ChatGPT came out.

Therefore, if you just extrapolate that a little laterally, it also means to an employee that every one of our employees will have to be in a very different stage of mental hunger of learning for next three years. Because this technology is going to go forward, it’s going to impact everything that we do, be it coding, be it testing, be it engineering, be it implementation of large-scale system integration projects and so on and so forth.

So, I think organisation will have to remain agile to keep on putting that in front of employees, and employees on their side will have to be very agile to run with it. I think it’s relearning of every, knowledge stream that we know.

Q: One of the issues that is being spoken about is also the skills gap and the skills shortage in being able to leverage on this AI opportunity and there companies like yours, the private sector would perhaps need to do the heavy lifting?

Gummadi: Adoption of AI is led by more of consumer, and less of the business. Even at Cognizant, we are in process of training 2,00,000 of our associates in the AI and Gen AI technologies. And we have committed that we’re going to train 1 million folks in the AI and Gen AI technologies, and we are well underway on that. So, we are calibrating our talent strategy, which includes recruitment, skilling, up skilling, training and everything on those lines to address those skill gaps. We have defined our curriculum for our training. We are partnering with some external agencies to take their help to impart the training. So, I think we are well underway on that.

Watch accompanying video for entire conversation.