Arvind Jain contrasts today's AI with the earlier RPA hype cycle, arguing the current wave is fundamentally different because it produces genuinely surprising, human-like capabilities rather than brittle rule-following. ✦ AI generated
Arvind Jain · BG2 Pod · 2025-12-23 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 11:39
“You know, the last time enterprises got this excited about a tool was called RPA... What's different this time? How how is the nature of the architecture of the technology different from the previous automation cycle?”
When when we saw it first it was basically magic. And and we couldn't believe that this is a machine that is doing this work. Machines just simply cannot do these kind of things, you know, that we saw them do. Like writing on their own, um having emotion, understanding emotion.
verbatim transcript · starts at 11:39
11:19technology different from the previous automation cycle? Either of you. Yeah, well, I mean I I first of all, RPA like it didn't take, you know, it didn't capture my attention at all. So I have no I actually can't, you know, >> [laughter] >> So so so I think I I think like I I would not compare these two technologies at all. Like, you know, you know, what we what we're seeing now
11:39with AI is so fundamental, you know, it's it's, you know, it's it's the uh you know, when when we saw it first it was basically magic. And and we couldn't believe that this is a machine that is doing this work. Machines just simply cannot do these kind of things, you know, that we saw them do. Like writing on their own, um having emotion, understanding emotion. Um so it's a um
12:04it's you know, it's it's fundamental, it's different and and the Um >> [clears throat] >> and and that's why like, you know, I don't think, you know, we this this this technology is going to fizzle out. Um and it it's not like, you know, you don't have to be like a financial expert or, you know, you know, like sort of a deep thinker on business. This is this
12:24is obvious stuff. Like, you know, all of us know, all of us feel it. All of all of us can see the capability of this technology and we know it's special and it's going to be it's going to be around. Yeah. You want to hear my RPA? Please. You know, I mean it was rule-based and the problem with it, especially if you're, you know, you're you want
12:40something that automates what's going on on your desktop and automate the work that's happening, it's just that there's too much unexpected things that happen and it's just hard and brittle to set it up. Mhm. It wasn't learning ever. Mhm. So there was like zero learning. It was like you tell it exactly where the rules and if you got something wrong, you you need to go and go back and expand the
12:56rules. Here, you have something that's learning. Mhm. Right? So it can it can improve and it can generalize and it can understand the patterns and do pattern recognition. Uh so that's the fundamental difference between these two. >> 100%. Now, um there has been many startups that have failed in the generative AI we're going to replace RPA with generative AI models. There's many startups that failed actually that I
13:18know of like pretty some high profile ones. It's because um the paradigm we live in today with AI is there's still problems. The biggest problem is that you bake a model and that's where it's learned everything it needs to learn and then you freeze it. Mhm. And then you launch it and then maybe you give it some context but that's it, it's frozen. So therein lies the problem that, you know, we need we
13:39need an AI that really can sort of continue learning while it's using the desktop and clicking around. So I do think this problem is hard to to to nail but I think Arvin is right that it's like there's no comparison at all. It's like rule brittle rule-based stuff versus learning agentic system. Uh I think it's going to nail it perfectly but we haven't really nailed computer use yet. Yeah. Working on it. The number