In an interview, Vivek Singhal, Founder and CEO, Strategic Business Management Co. and author of Dominion and Dharma, speaks with TimesTech about how artificial intelligence is redefining human civilization. He explores the philosophical foundations of AI, the lessons modern technology can draw from ancient civilizations, and why ethical, cultural, and spiritual values must guide the development of intelligent systems in the decades ahead.
Read the full interview here:
TimesTech: As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into our daily lives, how do you see it reshaping what it means to be human in the coming decades?
Vivek: I believe we stand at a civilizational inflection point not unlike the emergence of writing in Mesopotamia or Vedic recitation traditions that encoded entire cosmologies into living memory. Artificial intelligence is not merely a tool — it is a mirror, reflecting the consciousness we have cultivated, or failed to. In the coming decades, AI will reshape human identity precisely because it externalizes cognition itself, the last domain we considered exclusively our own. The Dharmic question is not what AI will do to us, but what we choose to become through it. If we approach AI from a Dominion paradigm — treating intelligence as something to own and weaponize — we diminish ourselves. Approached as Dharmic co-creators, we may deepen what it means to be human.
TimesTech: Throughout history, civilizations have been defined by their technological advancements. How does the Al revolution compare with transformative innovations such as agriculture, writing, or the printing press?
Vivek: Every civilization-defining technology has carried within it a metaphysical signature. Agriculture encoded our relationship with the earth as cultivation and covenant. Writing transformed collective memory into something that could outlive the body. The printing press democratized authority, shattering the monopoly of priestly interpretation. AI is different in one crucial sense: for the first time, the technology itself appears to reason. I draw an important parallel to the ancient Indian concept of Chit — pure consciousness — because AI forces us to ask what cognition truly is. The danger is that we are innovating from within a Dominion paradigm that treats intelligence as infrastructure rather than sacred faculty. Ancient civilizations did not separate technological mastery from spiritual understanding. We urgently need to recover that integration.
TimesTech: Ancient civilizations developed remarkable engineering, architectural, and scientific achievements with limited resources. What lessons can modern technologists learn from these early innovations?
Vivek: When I study the hydraulic engineering of Mohenjo-daro or the astronomical precision embedded in Angkor Wat’s architecture, I encounter a lesson that modern technologists rarely receive in their training: constraint is often the mother of wisdom, not merely necessity. Ancient builders could not afford to separate function from meaning. A granary was also a cosmological statement. A temple was simultaneously a civic institution. Today, we build with virtually unlimited computational resources and yet frequently produce systems that are brittle, alienating, and ethically opaque. The lesson ancient civilizations offer is integration — of purpose, place, and people. Modern technologists would do well to design not merely for efficiency or scale, but for coherence. Technology that cannot articulate its deeper purpose has already failed its civilization.
TimesTech: Do you believe technology is fundamentally changing human behavior, or is it simply amplifying traits and tendencies that have always existed within societies?
Vivek: I lean toward the amplification thesis, but with a crucial qualification. Technology does not merely amplify existing tendencies — it selects for them, rewarding certain behaviors while making others structurally invisible. Consider how social media has not invented tribalism but has monetized it with algorithmic precision. The Dharmic tradition offers a more nuanced lens: every instrument carries a quality of consciousness — what Sanskrit calls a Guna — and tends to pull users toward that quality over time. A technology designed around engagement through anxiety will amplify anxiety. This is not fate; it is design. The responsibility lies with those who architect these systems. We must ask not only what tendencies technology amplifies, but which ones it was originally built to serve.
TimesTech: As Al systems begin to influence decision-making, creativity, and knowledge-sharing, how can humanity ensure that technological progress remains aligned with ethical and cultural values?
Vivek: This is the defining governance challenge of our era, and I believe the answer is partially encoded in ancient ethical traditions that modern policymakers have been too quick to dismiss as ornamental. The Dharmic concept of Rta — cosmic order, the principle that every action must remain in right relationship with the whole — provides a more rigorous framework than most AI ethics documents circulating in Silicon Valley boardrooms. Alignment is not merely a technical problem. It is a civilizational one. We need multivocal global governance structures that draw not only from Western liberal frameworks but from Confucian relational ethics, Ubuntu philosophy, and Dharmic traditions of duty-bound cognition. Technology aligned only with one civilization’s values is not aligned — it is colonizing.
TimesTech: Looking at the trajectory from ancient tools to modern Al, what role should technology play in shaping the future of human civilization, and where should we draw the line between augmentation and dependence?
Vivek: The trajectory from the Acheulean hand axe to the transformer architecture is, at its heart, a story about the expansion of human agency. Each generation of tools extended our reach — into nature, into time, into other minds. Where to draw the line between augmentation and dependence is, in Dharmic terms, a question of sovereignty: who remains the author of one’s own consciousness? I believe technology should serve as a Shakti — a dynamic, empowering force — not as a substitute for the inner development that makes us fully human. The line is wherever technology begins to atrophy our capacity for attention, judgment, and moral discernment. Civilizations that surrendered those faculties to external systems did not endure. We should study them carefully.
