"Safest Bet Is Capability": S Jaishankar On Handling An Uncertain Future

For S Jaishankar, the best way to deal with an uncertain future is "capability," and that's the safest bet to have. There will be unforeseen circumstances, but a capable person would be able to handle the contingencies, the foreign minister said while speaking to NDTV's CEO and Editor-In-Chief Rahul Kanwal at the HT Leadership Summit this morning.

"Technology could actually end up as a great fragment. So when you look at many of these issues, I think there are really so many uncertainties out there. The best way of dealing with tomorrow is capability, capability, and capability. The world will change around us because people often expect clarity. It's like, if you only pleased so-and-so person, if you only did such-and-such a thing; it's so intricate and often so contradictory that the safest thing to bet on is capability," said Jaishankar.

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One who is capable would take care of the unforeseen future, the minister asserted, citing potential threats from AI as an example.

"If you have the capability, you can handle contingencies because there will be contingencies. There will be unforeseen circumstances with growing frequency, rapidity, and seriousness. When I look at tomorrow, at what Artificial Intelligence (AI) threatens to bring or expects to bring, I think we'll be in for a change of a kind that we can't even imagine," the minister added.

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Asked how AI could affect diplomacy, he recalled his experience with ChatGPT: "The first impact of it I saw was when more pieces of papers (started) arriving on my desk, which looked more like me till I discovered it was ChatGPT."

He described it as both good and bad.

"It's a good thing because in many ways, it captures everything you have done. The problem is that it does not capture what you intend to do, which may be radically different from your past record. It's a projection and not a prognostication," said Jaishankar.