Image Attribution: Yutong Liu & Kingston School of Art / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
We are living through a technological rupture, and an AI boom is underway. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) products and services have moved from research labs into everyday life with remarkable speed. Multi-purpose chatbots now assist with tasks ranging from drafting emails to writing code. AI companions are being marketed to consumers seeking connection. Vibe coding tools allow people with relatively little to no programming experience to build functional software through natural language prompts. AI-generated content, in forms like text, image, audio, and video, has become ambient, appearing in social feeds, search results, and professional workflows with limited indication of its origins.
According to Stanford University’s 2025 AI Index Report, global corporate investment in AI reached 252 billion dollars in 2024, a 44 percent increase from the previous year.
Generative AI applications have broken app installation records across markets. Public and private institutions that support modern society, such as governments, universities, hospitals, and businesses are adopting AI tools at a pace that frequently outstrips the institutional capacity to evaluate, govern, or even understand what is being introduced.
We are, however, still in the nascent stages of comprehending what this shift means in practice. The decisions being made now will shape how AI will alter institutions and social life for years to come. These include which AI tools are introduced into classrooms and workplaces, which systems are permitted to administer public services, and what governance frameworks are established to oversee their use. Examining those decisions, and their consequences, is the starting point for this research.
As part of a collaboration between Aapti Institute and the Centre for Responsible AI at IIT Madras, and supported by the COIN Network in CeRAI, we are initiating research across two domains where the spread of AI is raising urgent questions about equity, accountability, and what it means to learn, work, and live in an AI-mediated world.
The first pillar of inquiry centres on the introduction of AI in assessments, specifically in higher education contexts. Assessment is a cornerstone of education – the mechanism through which institutions certify learning, confer credentials, and communicate to students and employers what competencies matter. UNESCO’s 2025 report on AI and education observes that generative AI is not destabilising assessment, it is exposing where assessment was already fragile. When AI can complete an essay, solve a problem set, or generate a structured response indistinguishably from a student, the validity of the credential and the fairness of the process become impossible to ignore. The trajectory of assessment in higher education, who designs it, what it measures, and whether it can be trusted will be shaped by decisions and institutional choices being made at this moment.
Our research examines this disruption in Indian and global higher education in terms of how students and faculty are navigating AI use in practice, what impact AI has on specific forms of assessments, and what institutional responses are emerging. It further considers the future implications such as what models of assessment remain viable as AI capabilities advance, and what governance frameworks are required to ensure that the disruption does not entrench existing inequalities in access to learning or erode the credibility of academic credentials.
The second area is the future of society more broadly and specifically, how people across different social positions are experiencing and envisioning the spread of AI in their everyday lives. This is not primarily a question about AI adoption rates or technology preferences, but one about what AI is doing to the quality of daily experience, to relationships and communication between people and institutions, and to the distribution of agency and accountability in a society that is changing faster than it can reflect on the change.
Our research draws on expert interviews, secondary research, autoethnographic study as well as stakeholder workshops. The outputs of this research include research reports and policy briefs, and for the society pillar in particular, a vignette series and art installation that translates findings into a public-facing, experiential form.
AI has arrived and spread with great speed. The frameworks and norms being established today will shape how AI embeds itself into Indian institutions and social relations for years to come. This research attempts to unpack and document the various ways that people perceive the integration of AI into their everyday lives, and how they envision navigating it.For updates on the project, please keep an eye on our LinkedIn. We would love to hear from interested parties, and can be reached via email at [email protected].
