'Tech Must Serve Humanity, Not The Other Way Around': Arundhati Bhattacharya, President & CEO, Salesforce South Asia

Mumbai: Asia’s rapid push into AI has prompted a warning from Salesforce South Asia chief Arundhati Bhattacharya, who said the region’s next wave of technological growth must prioritise human-centric design.

Addressing business leaders and policymakers at the Mint All About AI Tech4Good Awards, she said advances in digital finance, health care, and education are accelerating at a pace that demands new safeguards.

“Technology must serve humanity,” she said, calling on companies to embed ethics, privacy, and accountability into the foundation of their AI systems.

The event, now in its second year, featured innovators from Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and India.

Bhattacharya, who formerly led the State Bank of India, said she has watched technology reshape economic systems from within. India’s experience in financial inclusion, she noted, shows how digital infrastructure can lift entire communities. A combination of Aadhaar-based identity, widespread mobile access, and instant payments created one of the world’s largest financial inclusion programmes in a matter of years, she added.

“I have witnessed with my own eyes how technology can ignite potential and uplift communities from the ground up,” she said.

According to her, tools such as generative AI and machine learning can accelerate diagnosis in healthcare, widen access to education through adaptive learning, and help governments deliver services faster. But the same technologies, she said, can amplify bias, erode privacy, or outpace regulation if deployed without clear frameworks.

“The responsibility lies with us to ensure that technology serves humanity,” she said.

The region’s push for sovereign AI models has intensified this year, driven both by national policy and concerns about the influence of global platforms.

Bhattacharya said locally trained systems will matter for languages, cultural nuance, and long-term resilience. She urged developers and businesses to treat ‘guardrails’ not as constraints but as ‘essential infrastructure’ for long-term trust.

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