Responsible AI cannot be an afterthought, needs to be part of DNA: Infosys CTO Rafee Tarafdar

Mohammed Rafee Tarafdar is CTO of Infosys, and is responsible for the technology vision and strategy at the company. He founded the Strategic Technology Group, a global team of technology leaders, full stack architects and power programmers working on complex digital, cloud and AI programmes for enterprise clients of Infosys and Infosys platforms.

A Mechanical Engineering graduate from Karnatak University, Rafee Tarafdar is passionate about social impact and personally mentors the Tech For Good programme at Infosys.

He spoke to indianexpress.com on how Tech for Good fits into the organisation’s goals and objectives, on Responsible AI, and how AI could impact the common man. Edited excerpts:
Mohammed Rafee Tarafdar: Tech for Good falls under Infosys’ ESG ambitions and goals. When we formulated and published our ESG vision for 2030, there were multiple pillars and one of the pillars is using technology to drive social good.

As per our plans for Tech for Good for 2025, we had a goal to impact around 80 million lives. We have achieved our goal. Now, we are trying to redefine our goals for 2030 and will publish it in the next few months.

for Good, for us, is a strategic area of focus and we believe that, given all of the tech that we work with clients globally and in India, we can use it to drive social impact and change. And for this, we have identified three broad areas for impact: e-governance, healthcare, and education. We have, on average, 50 dedicated professionals who work solely on Tech for Good initiatives. We also bring in volunteers from other teams for specific projects. I personally lead the initiative at an organisational level.