The Next Chapter of AI Is About Meaning, Memory and Better Decisions

Sachin Dev Duggal, Founder and CEO of SecondBrain.ai, spoke to The Hans India about the evolving role of AI in business, leadership and innovation. He shares why organisations must move beyond viewing AI as a productivity tool, how India can build globally relevant AI solutions, and why preserving institutional knowledge may become the next frontier of enterprise intelligence.

AI is often described as a transformative technology. From a leadership perspective, what mindset shift do CEOs need to make to fully realise its potential?

The biggest mistake leaders make is viewing AI primarily as a productivity tool. Productivity gains are inevitable, but they are only the beginning. The real opportunity is to rethink how intelligence flows through an organisation.

Most companies possess decades of expertise, decisions and institutional knowledge, yet much of it remains inaccessible when it is needed most. Leaders should move beyond asking how AI can automate tasks and start asking how it can amplify collective intelligence.

The organisations that succeed will not be those with the most AI, but those that best combine human judgment with machine intelligence. Over time, competitive advantage will come from preserving context, memory and expertise, not simply generating more output.

India has made AI a key pillar of its digital and innovation agenda. What role should government, industry, and academia play in ensuring the country becomes not just a consumer of AI, but a creator of globally relevant AI solutions?

India has a unique advantage because it operates at the intersection of immense scale and diversity. Building AI for India means solving challenges across languages, cultures and socio-economic contexts. Those capabilities can have global relevance.

The government must continue investing in digital infrastructure and creating an environment where innovation can flourish. Industry should focus on solving meaningful problems rather than replicating existing solutions. Academia must prepare talent for a future where creativity, judgment and interdisciplinary thinking become increasingly valuable.

India’s greatest opportunity may not be building the largest AI models. It may be creating the most context aware and culturally intelligent systems in the world.

Global companies are increasingly using AI to bring work in-house and reduce dependence on external vendors. Do you see AI fundamentally reshaping traditional outsourcing and services models, particularly for India’s IT sector?

AI will reshape outsourcing, but not by eliminating it. Instead, it will change where value is created.

Traditional outsourcing was built around labour arbitrage. The next phase will be driven by expertise, context and outcomes. As AI makes execution more accessible, differentiation will increasingly come from domain knowledge, business understanding and the ability to solve complex problems.

India’s technology sector has reinvented itself multiple times over the last three decades. AI is simply the next chapter, and the winners will be those that use AI to augment expertise rather than merely automate tasks.

How do you see the role of managers and knowledge workers evolving as AI becomes a more active participant in day-to-day work?

As AI takes on a larger role in processing and coordinating information, managers will spend less time supervising tasks and more time providing direction, clarity and strategic intent.

The same shift applies to knowledge workers. Many activities that once involved gathering, organising and presenting information can now be assisted by AI. Human value will increasingly come from interpreting information, connecting ideas and making sound decisions.

The future knowledge worker is not simply a repository of information, but an orchestrator of meaning and action.

Many organisations are investing in AI to drive efficiency and reduce costs. How should leaders balance the pursuit of productivity gains with the responsibility of building and retaining human talent?

If AI is viewed purely as a cost reduction tool, organisations risk becoming more efficient but less innovative. The greatest value of AI lies in elevating human capability, not replacing it.

Throughout history, technology has shifted human effort toward higher value work. AI presents a similar opportunity by reducing repetitive tasks and allowing people to focus on creativity, critical thinking, communication and decision-making.

The goal should not be fewer people. There should be more capable people. Organisations that use AI to enhance human potential will create a stronger foundation for long-term growth.

Every organisation possesses years of accumulated expertise and institutional memory. Why has this knowledge remained so difficult to unlock, and what needs to change?

Most organisations do not suffer from a lack of information. They suffer from a lack of accessible understanding.

Enterprises are filled with documents, emails, presentations and conversations, yet valuable knowledge often remains fragmented and disconnected. The challenge is not storing information. It is preserving context and meaning.

The next frontier of enterprise AI will be systems that understand relationships between ideas, retain institutional memory and make knowledge available when decisions are being made. The future of AI is not simply generating answers. It is helping organisations remember and apply what they already know.