Embassy of India

Muscat

*****

30 May 2024

‘Intelligence in the Age of Artificial Intelligence’

Remarks by Ambassador Amit Narang

President and Members of the School Management Committee,

Principal,

Teachers,

Dear children, 

it’s a great pleasure to be here in the Indian School, Ibra and I appreciate the very generous welcome from the school community. 

Whenever I travel across Oman, it is always my endeavor to visit the Indian schools. I'm myself a parent of a school going child. And I know the importance of education when it comes to any Indian citizen. 

Something that unites us all, no matter where in India we are from, is the emphasis we place on getting good education for our children. Many of our Omani friends often ask me what is the reason for the success of Indians worldwide? How come it is that amidst so many crises in the world, with so many wars going on, Indians seem to be doing well everywhere? 

And this is of course an empirical fact. India is doing well. Our people are prospering. Our diaspora is moving out in larger numbers and everywhere from South America to South Africa, succeeding very well. What is the secret to this success, I am often asked. 

And I always have the simple answer that every Indian knows that education is the only passport to success. We grow up in a competitive milieu and we know from very early on that the only way we can succeed, is to get good education. For ourselves and for our children.

The results of Indian School Ibra that were just presented are proof that Indians no matter where they are in the world always excel in education. 

Dear Friends,

The Indian schooling system in Oman anchors the Indian community. If you take out the school from a particular city, you will find that the community of Indians will also disappear. Indians always want to settle at a place where good education is available. 

I therefore wish to congratulate and commend the President of the SMC, the Principal, the parent community, the teachers and the staff over the years who have contributed to making Indian School in Ibra a stable source of quality education for our diaspora.

The Indian schooling system in my view plays another important role. The role of diplomacy. This might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but it is true. 

Every child that graduates from any of the Indian schools in Oman - and there are 44,000 Indian students currently studying in Oman - go away from higher studies either back to India, or other countries in the world.

But wherever in the world they go, they carry two things with them - one, of course, they carry quality Indian education in their minds. But they also carry a bit of Oman with them because they have spent their childhoods here. 

So in this sense, these children, when they graduate, they are brand Ambassadors of Oman; brand Ambassadors of India-Oman friendship. Having spent their childhoods here, they will always have a kind word about Oman and the friendship between our two peoples. 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Just like the children here, their country India is also young. As a nation, we are only 75 years old. That's very young. We are tremendously proud of the achievements that we have made so far. 

We have gone from being the 11th largest economy to the 5th largest economy in a matter of 10 years; and we will become the 3rd largest in a couple of years hopefully. We have moved out millions of our people over the poverty line in the last several years. The fact is that today India is the talk of the town, whether it comes to software engineering, artificial intelligence, space exploration, digital payments, mobile banking, start-ups or unicorns. 

We are tremendously proud of these achievements. 

But as Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji has said, we are now looking at the Amrit Kaal or the next 25 years to 2047, when India at 100 years old, will be a developed country, a Viksit Bharat. 

And these next 25 years will rest on the shoulders of these young children.

So when you grow up dear children, it is your job, your generation's task to take India from where we have reached to the point we are aspiring to be. 

Dear Children,

We today live in a rapidly changing world and I thought I'll talk to you today about Intelligence in the age of artificial intelligence. 

Our world is changing rapidly. Of course, the world has always changed rapidly. But the pace of change that this young generation will go through is unheard of. 

This is the age, literally, of artificial intelligence. An age where the computer cannot just do the account books for you. That is more or less de riguer now. The scary part today is that the computer can actually write better poetry than you! It can write better than you, think better than you, paint and express better than you!

That is the age that you are inheriting. 

How do we prepare students for this age? How do these students prepare themselves for this age? 

I was reading a statistic recently which really blew my mind. It said that 65% of school children today will be working in jobs that do not exist today. In other words, many of you will be doing things that we don’t even know about. These jobs are yet to be invented. 

That is how fast the world is changing. So how do you prepare yourself, children, for this world?

Yours is no more a world with a water tight compartment between let's say engineering and medicine or between accounting and management. Things are getting blurred. We are talking about integrated courses. We are talking about a continuous process of education. 

That is the real challenge where the Indian schooling system also has to rise up to. How do you prepare for this world? I don't have the answers, of course. I myself have not lived in this world so far. My world was much more predictable. 

But there are some things that come to my mind.

The first of course is that you have to be lifelong learners. It is not enough to say I have done my course, I have done my graduation, I've done my engineering etc and khallas, that’s it. 

This will no longer work. 

We are living longer lives now. Now perhaps every 10 years you will have to graduate with a new degree. And by degree I don’t mean a real college degree in the traditional sense, but a new skill set. 

You will have to get adept at learning, unlearning and relearning. 

Some of the skills that you learn today will be irrelevant tomorrow. I remember when I was passing out of school, there was something called MS-DOS. It was the rage among students then. Everyone wanted to learn it. Fast forward to today, and I am sure most of you haven’t even heard about it. Because learning MS-DOS is irrelevant. We have left it behind. 

Similarly, things that we are doing today maybe irrelevant in 10 years. 

This means you have to continuously upgrade your skills. It is something like your phone does. Updates itself every month of so with a new version. Just like that, you also will have to update your software every few years, if not every few months. That is the challenge. 

So how do you actually develop your intelligence in the age of artificial intelligence? 

To my mind 5 things are important. 

First and foremost, make a habit of reading books. This is perhaps very counter intuitive.  

We are losing the habit of reading. We are absorbed in screens. And somehow the younger generation feels that since all the answers are on the tablet or on the phone, we don't need to read books. This is far from the truth. 

If you have to prepare for the world of artificial intelligence, please inculcate the habit of reading daily - 2 pages, 3 pages, 10 pages; a book a month or two books a month - read as much as you can. It also does not matter what you read - science, math, history, philosophy, fiction, comic books. Read anything, but make reading a part of your daily life. 

Two, build communication skills by learning a foreign language. 

All these children will be inevitably working in an international environment. They would be collaborating with people of different nationalities speaking different languages. 

Any child that has the skill of an additional foreign language will have an advantage in the coming world. And to this audience here, my message is that you are living in an Arabic speaking country, so please learn Arabic. It will do you a world of good. Arabic is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. No matter where you will be, it will be an additional skill. It will be a bonus in your CV. Please invest in learning this foreign language. 

I would have asked children to learn Spanish if this discussions was taking place in Mexico or Chinese if this was China. 

The point is, you have an advantage since you are living in an Arabic speaking environment. Make use of it. 

Three, pursue a sport or practice Yoga. Reading is for your software what Yoga is for your hardware, your bodies. Good software cannot reside in weak hardware. Even if it is for 5 minutes in the morning, make Yoga a part of your lives.

Fourth, do something creative. Learn to dance, to sing, play a guitar, play the tabla, play the Rubik's cube if you like it. Pursue a creative talent because your mind needs this diversity of stimulus.

Fifth, but not the least, pursue a hobby. Your greatest enemy in the next 20 years will be stress. Today already we are living in a lifestyle where all of us are continuously in stress. 

Running from place to place answering emails, answering whatsapps. Stress in many ways will be the greatest enemy to your peace of mind and to your health. A healthy lifestyle is of course important, but you also need to give your mind an outlet. A quiet place where you can forget the daily pressures and do something that brings peace and tranquility. 

Studying and sports are not enough. Cultivate a hobby.  Do something that you are passionate about. In my age, many of us used to collect stamps. This hobby has died out now. Pursue anything you like to do. Perhaps photography interests you, or painting, or collecting stickers.

Do something but learn to destress even as you are growing up because when you are grown up stress will be a greatest problem. 

To conclude, for developing intelligence in the age of artificial intelligence, the key is not to compete with artificial intelligence. The key rather is to take the ‘artificial’ out of it and to focus on ‘human’ intelligence. Some of the attributes I mentioned will help you develop the skills that make us human. Skills that will help you utilize AI as a tool rather than become dependent on it.  

My best wishes once again to Indian School Ibra.  I am very happy to be here and I can’t wait for these children to make Bharat proud! 

Namaskar.

Jai Hind.