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Hyderabad: “It is only fair our companies with trillions of dollars of valuation to compensate people and society whose jobs are lost,” Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy said on Friday, March 27, proposing a “people credits” policy framework that would require AI companies to pay a levy for every job displaced by automation, drawing a parallel with carbon credits used to penalise polluting industries.

Reddy was delivering the keynote address at the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Symposium organised by the Harvard Kennedy School of Executive Education in Boston, USA. An alumnus of the school, he addressed the event virtually as the Telangana Legislative Assembly is currently in session. He was also the first Indian speaker at the symposium.

While describing AI as “mankind’s greatest invention,” Reddy cautioned that it was a “double-edged sword” that could cause widespread harm without early and adequate safeguards.

Acknowledging the particular vulnerability of Hyderabad, which hosts a large number of Global Capability Centres (GCC) across software, pharma and other sectors, he outlined his government’s plans to get ahead of the disruption, including the development of a new Bharat Future City with a dedicated AI district and a push to scale up blue-collar employment in green energy, electric vehicles, tourism and manufacturing.

He also announced plans to build a large-scale skilling and re-skilling ecosystem in partnership with top global universities, including Harvard.

Reddy invited global investors to Telangana, noting the state already hosts over 100 Fortune 500 companies.

The symposium featured panel discussions on “The Race to AGI,” “AI in Emerging Markets,” “Geopolitics of Compute,” and “The Future of Work and Education.” 

Other speakers included Anousheh Ansari, CEO of XPRIZE, Illango Pachamuthu of the World Bank, Fatema Z from the Harvard Center for International Development, and Professor Landry Signe of the Brookings Institution.