At the 24th MMA All-India Management Students’ Convention, Mr. Yogi Kochhar, author and AI futurist, delivered a provocative address challenging students to break free from digital consumption patterns and embrace proactive thinking for an AI-driven future.
When I asked a room full of young students if they’d want a job offering 18 lakh rupees per year, nearly every hand shot up immediately. But then I posed a more critical question: do we really think?
To answer this, I conducted a simple numbers game. I asked everyone to pick a number between 1 and 9, multiply it by nine, add the digits, subtract five, convert it to a letter, think of a European country starting with that letter, then an animal and fruit based on the last letters. The result was stunning—most of the audience arrived at the same answer: a kangaroo eating an orange in Denmark.
This wasn’t magic. It was pattern recognition revealing something far more troubling: we act and react, but we don’t think proactively. And this distinction will determine who gets hired and who doesn’t.
Our Minds Have Been Stolen
I want to share something Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Prize winner from Africa, once said: “When missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said close your eyes and let’s pray. When we opened our eyes, we had the Bible and they had our lands.”
This is exactly what’s happening with AI today. Your minds are being taken away while you’re consumed by digital platforms. You spend six hours daily on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media. Your data flows to America, where it’s being converted into wealth—much like grass being fed to a cow to produce milk and cheese. They’re slicing, dicing, and tossing your attention across various platforms, converting your behavioral data into trillions of dollars, while you make memes and scroll endlessly.
The Harsh Truth About Jobs
Let me share some statistics that should wake you up. India’s GDP is approximately 4 trillion dollars, growing at about 7% annually. That adds roughly 280 billion dollars to our economy each year. But here’s what you need to understand: 90% of that growth goes into cement, steel, concrete, FMCGs, infrastructure, railways, highways, and bridges. Only 10% remains for jobs—just 28 billion dollars.
Out of that 28 billion, half goes to existing employees for increments and adjustments, leaving just 14 billion dollars for new positions. Now, there are 10 million graduates hitting the job market every year. If every graduate got a job from this pool, it would be worth just 1,400 dollars per year—less than what a rickshaw driver earns.
So when people promise you jobs, don’t believe them blindly. The economy simply doesn’t have the potential to generate enough employment. There are no jobs. This is the harsh truth.
Your Mind Is Being Destroyed
Your six hours of screen time, broken into two-second and three-second clips, is destroying your mind’s ability to think linearly. Your body is neuroplastic, meaning it adapts to patterns. When you can’t find your phone, you get anxious. You fight with your mother when she hides it during meals. But she’s protecting you because when you watch your phone while eating, your eyes consume the screen content while food goes into a dumpster. This is why we have obesity, health problems, inactivity, and depression.
IQ is pattern recognition—it’s linear thinking. Odd numbers, even numbers, prime numbers. But when you watch random clips one after another for six hours, that pattern recognition ability gets destroyed. Your mind becomes rotten while Americans make trillions of dollars from your attention, launching wars and building empires while we clap for them and make memes.
Here’s another critical difference: Americans also have six hours of screen time, but what do they watch? High-energy content—baseball, soccer, science and technology, NASA. What do we watch? We want cheap thrills. This difference matters enormously for our future.
It’s Time to Become Entrepreneurial
Given the job shortage, what should you do? You need to become entrepreneurial in your thinking. To be entrepreneurial, you must become proactive. To be proactive, you must get away from mindless internet consumption.
I want you to go back to your colleges and demand answers. Ask your principals and professors: why aren’t you teaching us AI? Why are you still teaching mechanical engineering and coding in outdated ways? Coding is becoming useless. Only 5% of coders will survive—the very best ones. Let’s be honest, we’re not the best coders. We’re cyber coolies, getting hired to build massive structures like Microsoft, then burning out.
I was part of Microsoft’s leadership team, and it pained me to meet taxi drivers in Manhattan who came to America as software developers from Chennai, only to burn out from repetitive work. If Bill Gates truly loved India so much, would he come and live here? The answer tells you everything about how we’re being used.
The AI Lab Revolution
Seven years ago, I went to Stanford and persistently wrote letters to Professor Andrew Ng until he agreed to meet. Instead of having a scheduled call, I flew to America and showed up at his office. We spent three days together—the most educational three days of my life. He showed me where the world was heading while we remain like blind people in a dark room looking for a black cat that doesn’t exist.
From that experience, we created an AI lab in Gurgaon. We approached IP University in Delhi and proposed converting all their courses to AI-integrated learning. They agreed to a pilot program on International Finance Management.
On the first day, with 1,500 students in the hall, we picked a random student who knew nothing about the subject. Using our AI operating system—the world’s first of its kind—we guided him through learning International Finance Management in real-time. The system explained concepts at a 12-year-old’s level with examples, taught him about currency arbitrage, showed him career opportunities, and even helped him create a complete business plan including target audience, value proposition, introduction letter, website, and no-code app. All in 30 minutes.
The professor came on stage and said this student achieved in 30 minutes what would have taken eight years otherwise.
What You Must Demand
This is what I want you to demand from your teachers. Ask them: what is the outcome of what you’re teaching me? Don’t just learn to build a drone because drones are popular. Learn who will buy your drone, how you’ll market it, how you’ll create value. Seek something productive and learnable from the internet rather than soaking in an endless haze of meaningless content.
Forget about just passing your courses. Your college is equally interested in ensuring you pass. Focus instead on skills that will make you relevant in an AI-driven world. In three years, traditional jobs will become history. Education itself is transforming, where three-year degree programs might compress into three months.
The Path Forward
The future belongs to those who refuse to think like everyone else—who break patterns, who seek knowledge actively rather than consuming content passively, and who understand that in an AI-driven world, proactive thinking is not optional. It’s essential for survival.
We are a diverse synthesis of cultures and ideas, drawing strength from embracing this diversity while thinking independently. That’s our identity as Indians, and that’s our greatest asset in navigating the world ahead.
