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On Tuesday, Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, said his group will go more gradually on AI than it planned a year ago, and will not spend out of fear of missing out. Stephen agrees that slow is an option, but argues the real word is deliberate, and that the most overlooked benefit of AI has little to do with AI.
In this episode, Stephen Forte covers:
- What Birla said. A shift from an AI arms race to a hard look at returns, "no one cap fits all," and the best description of executive AI anxiety of the year: a monster sitting in the last row.
- What he did not say. He did not call AI overhyped or say his group is stopping. On the same stage, Infosys said AI services are already about 8 percent of its revenue.
- Slow is fine. Deliberate is better. Nail down the approach and what success looks like before you spend. Throwing AI at the same old process is a jet engine on a shopping cart.
- The Bill of Work callback. AI bolted onto a process nobody has questioned since the fax machine gives you a faster fax machine.
- Show the P&L along the way. Go at a pace that makes sense and show real profit and loss impact every quarter, instead of boiling the ocean.
- The overlooked benefit. Explaining a process to an AI forces you to re-examine it. Many fixes are not AI at all: automated routines, or a vendor upgrade that slipped in years ago and nobody noticed.
- This quarter. Pick one process everyone complains about, write down every step, cross out what nobody can justify, fix what you can with what you own, and only then bring in AI with a number and a date.
Sources:
- The Economic Times (PTI), 13 October 2026: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ai/ai-insights/kumar-mangalam-birla-advocates-for-roi-focused-approach-to-ai-investments-amidst-growing-technological-landscape/articleshow/134919103.cms
- The Indian Express, 13 October 2026: https://indianexpress.com/article/business/infosys-tech-ceos-ai-demand-growth-energy-bottleneck-bloomberg-forum-10920080/
The AI Brief from the YPO Technology Network is a daily executive briefing on the AI developments that matter to business leaders. Hosted by Stephen Forte.
