Mumbai, Aug. 12 -- Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra on Tuesday urged Indian banks to treat artificial intelligence as a board-driven strategic commitment rather than a series of technology purchases, warning that institutions which delay will find the transition made for them. Malhotra said AI would define this decade as digitalisation defined the 2000s and liberalisation the 1990s. "The only question now before us is whether you shape the AI journey or you let it shape you by default," he said.

The RBI governor argued that AI differs in kind from earlier technological shifts. Where electricity multiplied energy, and the internet multiplied connectivity, AI multiplies intelligence - with direct consequences for how credit i...