K V Dipu - Senior President & Head - Operations & Customer Service,

Bajaj General Insurance Limited (formerly known as Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Co. Ltd.)

If the first phase of AI was about answering questions, the second phase is about answering possibilities. What began as harmless chatbots giving weather updates has evolved into a technological wave that is rewriting how the world thinks, decides, heals, builds, and creates. And honestly, it still feels like we’re only at chapter one.

A few years ago, AI was the polite assistant sitting in the corner of our screens. Today, it’s the engine powering entire ecosystems. Retailers no longer guess what customers want-AI predicts it. Airlines earlier competed on fares; today, they compete on AI-driven operations that cut delays by 20–30%. Even traffic signals in Bengaluru and London are now “thinking,” adjusting green times using live data to reduce congestion.

Look at healthcare: AI isn’t just analysing scans; it’s saving minutes-which in emergency care, often means saving lives. Mayo Clinic uses AI to detect cardiac issues earlier than traditional tests. In the UK, the NHS uses AI tools to cut radiology backlog by thousands of cases a week. And Moderna? It famously used AI models to design COVID vaccine variants in 48 hours, a process that once took months.

Manufacturing too has undergone a quiet revolution. Tesla’s factories run with AI-driven robots that inspect every weld and recalibrate machines in real time. BMW uses AI to predict equipment failure before a single bolt goes loose. In ports at Rotterdam and Singapore, autonomous cranes and AI logistics now move containers with near-zero human intervention while cutting processing time drastically.

Then there’s entertainment-the place we least expected disruption. Netflix’s recommendation engine generates nearly 80% of what users watch. Disney uses AI to restore old films frame by frame. Even cricket broadcasts now use AI to predict win probability, ball impact, and fielding efficiency-turning data into drama.

The most fascinating part? The use cases emerging now are no longer “AI projects”-they’re business strategies. Restaurants are using AI to predict demand down to the hour. Banks use AI to write loan memos. Fashion brands use AI to generate new designs. Cities run AI twins that simulate floods before the monsoon arrives.

 This is the leap: From chat to cognition, from automation to anticipation.

The next decade won’t be about who uses AI-it’ll be about who uses it wisely. The winners will marry human intuition with machine intelligence, balancing speed with sensitivity, and efficiency with empathy.

In the end, AI won’t replace humans, but humans who use AI will rewrite the playbook.