Why AI Needs Ethics First | Nekia Nichelle & Shekhar Natarajan | Live at CES 2026

**Nekia Nichelle** (0:10)
Nekia Nichelle here at CES 2026, and I have been running into all kinds of founders here, interesting conversations about innovation and how AI is taking charge over the world. So I'm here with Shekhar. What's one thing that the AI industry can benefit from slowing down?

**Shekhar Natarajan** (0:30)
Well, I think if you think about artificial intelligence and the profound impact it's going to have on the society, it's going to be multi-generational. It's as big as industrial revolution. But with industrial revolution, we had like 70 years, 70 years, right? Like when people looked in the eye of basically their employers and said, hey, we need to have a weekend. Weekend was created because of industrial revolution and the negotiating capability of the employee with the employer, right? We actually like passed rules on basically like not to have child labor. So these are all things basically like that were generated because time was created. And now with artificial intelligence, even before you know it at 3 a.m., the call center is gone because all it takes is for you to update the code and everything is automated. And that's a scary thought. Like, you know, like whenever you're going after efficiency, you pull out dignity somewhere.
You make it inhuman, you dehumanize things. And so we need to slow down. We need to basically understand the consequences of what we're doing. So artificial intelligence is not about automating everything and optimizing everything. It is about finding those things that we should not optimize. Where is the line of efficiency and where is the line of dignity? And when does it cross over? And having like sort of like presence of mind and all of these things. That's really key to this. And I'm deeply disturbed by the reckless nature of how we are actually deploying these things.

**Nekia Nichelle** (2:06)
I agree.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (2:07)
Right. So let's take NanoBanana for example. You know, people were in a hurry to roll that software out. The first thing it did, it created fraud. It created fraud.

**Nekia Nichelle** (2:18)
Right.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (2:19)
Think about like what ChatGPD did. Like, you know, it created a suicide note.

**Nekia Nichelle** (2:23)
Exactly.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (2:24)
So these are the types of things that like, you know, that deeply disturbs me. Yes. And I don't think, I don't think we need to build technology in a hurry. We need to build technology that is right.

**Nekia Nichelle** (2:34)
Exactly. Okay. Now we're talking, Shekhar. Let's get down to the nitty gritty here. Right. It's scary, the ramifications. I think we're going too fast with the innovation, and we're not slowing down to see how it can be harmful.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (2:48)
Humans were built to think, how do I win? Right. The mentality should be, how do we serve better? Right. So where does service mentality come from? Well, it is what good people do. They serve. So the virtue of basically serving people, for me, came from my parents.
I grew up in slums in India, where access to education, access to health care, access to basically anything, including clothes or library books was prohibited. People thought I was not called an untouchable, but I was treated like one. And so I think when you think about, even despite all of that, my father and mother who actually made 175 rupees a month, which is $2, they would give away their money and they felt like the next door neighbor was starving. So I cannot eat. So that was a guilt that actually they possessed. The sacrifice that was created because of that. I think those aspects of humanity is not really captured today. And so all we are trying to do today is we are building technology faster and then we are saying, like, oh, like, you know, if there is a risk, I'm going to add like a patchwork. Oh, if there's another risk created, add another patchwork. You know, Adam Rain, the guy who had the suicide note written for him from ChatGPT.

**Nekia Nichelle** (4:16)
Right.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (4:16)
Like, the best thing that ChatGPT can do at that point was to say, I'm going to put like parental guidelines. My five-year-old kid knows how to swipe my phone and open my phone.

**Nekia Nichelle** (4:28)
Exactly.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (4:28)
So do you think like parental guidance is going to really help anything?

**Nekia Nichelle** (4:33)
Be serious here. Right?

**Shekhar Natarajan** (4:35)
So he knows the pattern of how to open a phone.
So we are kidding ourselves. That's going to solve the problem. Virtue has to be native, not an afterthought.

**Nekia Nichelle** (4:47)
Okay.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (4:47)
Right? Like security, safety needs to be built into the system, not as an afterthought. Because as the models are coming out faster, you're going to be always in a catch-up mode. And that's not how we build technology. It's a very bad way to do it. And so my philosophy in all of this is to, let's capture what makes human human, right? What makes a beautiful human human, the extraordinary moments, and let's amplify that goodness into the technology. So now we're moving from AI, which is efficiency focused, to ethical AI, which is do no harm, to angelic intelligence, which is doing good, right? What good humans do and how do I mimic their behavior? And if you make that native, if you make that like inherent within the system of how intelligence is built, then we are not going to build wisdom that is going to be like replacing humans. We're going to enhance the human wisdom.