‘AI Must Serve Humanity, Not Rule It’: Sanjay Pradhan Pushes For Ethical Leadership At Mumbai Event

At a lively International Advertising Association (IAA) and AIAI event hosted at the Free Press Journal headquarters in Mumbai, Dr. Sanjay Pradhan, the President of the World Forum for Ethics in Business (WFEB), delivered a powerful message urging greater ethical accountability in the realm of artificial intelligence. Addressing a full house, Pradhan articulated a comprehensive vision for collaborative efforts between businesses, governments, and individualsto ensure AI benefits humanity, rather than the other way around.

AI: Humanity's greatest ethical test

Opening with a show of hands that revealed a room deeply divided on whether AI represents a force for good or a civilisational risk, Pradhan wasted no time in framing the stakes. "Artificial intelligence has rapidly become one of the most powerful technologies that humanity has ever created," he said. "It is unlocking breakthroughs in medicine, science, and creativity at a pace unimaginable just a few years ago."

Yet, he cautioned, the same technology carries profound dangers. "The same technology that can transform lives can also inflict profound harm. It can turbocharge disinformation faster than truth can travel. It can steal our privacy, deepen injustice, and rob hundreds of millions of people of their livelihoods," he warned, citing concerns raised by AI pioneers including Geoffrey Hinton, often called the godfather of AI.

For Pradhan, the pivotal question has already been answered. "The question is no longer whether AI will shape our world. It already has shaped our world. The real question is whether we will shape AI with ethics, humanity, and wisdom," he said. "In other words, not what AI can do, but what AI should do."

Four urgent risks - and practical solutions

Structured around four guiding questions - why, what, how, and who - Pradhan walked the audience through WFEB's emerging AI Ethics Partnership, a global platform designed to advance responsible AI. He identified four priority challenges: disinformation, bias and discrimination, data privacy, and job security.

On disinformation, he cited a stark EU warning that by 2030, 70 percent of online content could be AI-generated disinformation, calling for mandatory watermarking and source disclosure. On bias, he pointed to a Dutch government forced to resign after an algorithm wrongly flagged 26,000 families - many of them immigrants - for welfare fraud they did not commit. On data privacy, he cited the Cambridge Analytica scandal and held up Apple as a model for embedding privacy as a human right. And on jobs, he noted that AI could displace 300 million workers globally, with women disproportionately affected.

The three-layered cake: Ethics from code to conscience

In a memorable metaphor, Pradhan described ethical AI as a three-layered cake. The outer layer represents visible outcomes - the business and social value ethical AI creates. The middle layer is culture, moving from ethical code to ethical practice within organisations. The innermost layer, he said, is the most important: the conscience of the individual leader.

Drawing on ancient Indian wisdom through WFEB co-founder Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Pradhan quoted, "Artificial intelligence can only reproduce what is stored. Absolute intelligence is boundless. Absolute intelligence is the all-pervading wellspring of conscience, creativity, and compassion." He argued that breathwork and meditation practices can cultivate the calm, inner intelligence needed for ethical leadership - flipping the instinct from "What's in it for me?" to "What can I do for you?"

Anthropic's moral courage as a model

Pradhan drew particular attention to AI company Anthropic, which recently declined a major US defence contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars over concerns about AI-enabled weapons and mass surveillance - a stand it held firm on despite pressure from the Trump administration. The result, he noted, was a surge in the company's popularity and market value, while OpenAI - which took up the contract - faced a consumer-led 'quit-GPT' campaign.

"Our vision is that the moral courage we saw in Anthropic becomes the norm, not the exception. And when that happens, the future will be determined not by powerful machines, but by the moral courage of leaders and companies that deploy them," he declared.

Rise in a murmuration of conscience

Pradhan closed his speech with a stirring appeal drawn from nature. Describing how flocks of starlings - called murmurations - collectively drive away predatory falcons, he urged the audience to see themselves as starlings in the face of the falcons of disinformation and surveillance. "Individual citizens and businesses are like starlings. Alone, we feel helpless in the face of the grand falcons of disinformation surveillance. But if we were to rise together, we too can forge a murmuration that can steer the most powerful technology towards serving humanity."

He called on attendees to join WFEB's AI Ethics Partnership, invest in ethical culture within their organisations, and collectively reward companies that lead with responsibility. "Let us rise in a magnificent murmuration of conscience," he urged, "to ensure that artificial intelligence is guided by absolute intelligence, that technology reflects our deepest human values and not merely the cold logic of algorithms."

Published on: Monday, March 09, 2026, 05:44 PM IST