Actor-theatre artist Prakash Belawadi began his session at TechSparks 2026 with a simple question: “Any artists out there?”
He went on to answer his own question with a profound reflection: “This is a trick question. You are all born artists. But the formal education system and corporate life crushed the artist in you. Reconnect with the artist in you; it will help you survive in this AI age,” he said.
Belawadi spoke on “The last human advantage: What AI cannot replace”, discussing how technology is changing creativity, work, culture, and public life.
Responding to a question about whether AI challenges artists and whether they need to upskill to remain relevant, Belawadi distinguished between art created for personal fulfilment and art produced for commercial or practical purposes.
To illustrate his point, Belawadi asked how many people in the room had tried writing poetry. While few had identified themselves as artists, several hands went up in response to the question about poetry.
“Why would you want to write poetry? You don’t think you’re going to make money out of it. You don’t think it’s going to be a career. Why did you try to write?” he asked.
For Belawadi, the answer lies in the impulse to create something for oneself, without necessarily seeking commercial value or external validation. In such cases, he argued, AI isn't a challenge because the act of creation is the point.
“You write it because you felt like it. You don’t take AI’s help to write poetry,” he added.
However, the equation changes when creativity becomes a professional assignment with a deadline and a specific outcome. For instance, a lyricist tasked with writing a song within four hours could use AI to generate lyrics based on the scene's characters, setting, language, and context.
In these cases, AI becomes a tool for accomplishing a defined objective. As more people turn to it for similar tasks, competition for artists intensifies.
“If you want to do something with art that is useful, I think AI is more than a challenge. We’ll have to look for another occupation, I would say,” Belawadi said.
He acknowledged that actors could also be replaced in certain roles as the technology advances.
“For me as an actor, for instance, at the present level of AI, I can give my persona and charge royalty only for my persona. You can make a non-fungible token of my persona, then just lend it, and AI will do the rest. I don’t need to go to shoot, for instance. I can be replaced,” he said.
Belawadi believes AI cannot easily reproduce a dimension of human experience: the ability to respond to the world through lived experience.
While AI may replicate an actor's appearance and deliver a convincing performance, he believes replacing a person in a conventional screen role could be far easier than replicating the complexity of an individual shaped by lived experience.
“But if you are doing a hero role in a movie, it’s very easy to replace, I think,” he said.
Belawadi pointed out that young people today face a difficult double whammy: climate change and a slew of new technologies.
“There’s a third that’s related to both: you will need two and a half times more energy than you need now when AI is fully deployed, and that is going to make climate change worse. And the new technologies won’t give you jobs.”
Belawadi did not argue for holding back the technology. Asked which human skills beat AI, he turned the question around. “AI can replace many things humans are doing. The question is: what are you doing? Do you need to do that? What are you doing, and why are you doing it?”
He then offered a list of things he thinks AI could take over. It included:
- Courts: With around 54 million cases pending, he said AI could begin deciding them within seconds. Human judges could retain appeals.
- Primary health care: Diagnosis and minor procedures at village clinics, with remote guidance for complex surgery, delivered “without prejudice” of caste, gender, skin colour or geography.
- Elections: If people trust their phones with payments, he asked, why not trust an OTP with a vote?
- Accounting: He had told his daughter, a chartered accountant, that she was already out of a job.
- Traffic: He suggested a million driverless vehicles for Bengaluru would give the city back its streets.
Belawadi urged AI developers to use their skills to improve the lives of people around them, arguing that building ethical AI requires a sense of responsibility towards one's community.
“If you are building ethical AI, I think you need to rebel and make a better India. There is no other country that is as good for you as India is, if you have self-respect,” he said.
Emphasising that this responsibility begins with the people in one's immediate surroundings, he added, “When I say India, I don't mean you talk for 1.5 billion people. I'm saying you talk for yourself: whether you can be useful and make lives better for the people around you.”
He cautioned that developers who fail to bring this sense of purpose to their work risk being made redundant by the very technology they create. “Otherwise, I'll talk to AI. I may not need you, I'm saying,” he said.