Artificial Intelligence is changing the way people live and work. But one question still remains. Can technology alone help people build a better future, or does it also need human values?
Author and technology leader Prashant Gupta (PG) has spent much of his life thinking about this question. After more than 25 years in the technology industry, he turned his attention to philosophy and wrote the Consciousness Trilogy. His latest book, The Intelligence of Time, completes the three-book series.
How Engineering Opened Doors to Global Innovation
PG began his career as an engineer with a strong interest in science and leadership. As a student, he received the IEEE Larry K. Wilson Student Leadership Award for the Asia Pacific region and the Lt. Governor Best Student Gold Medal from University of Delhi College of Engineering. He later earned a master’s degree from the University of Florida, where he studied multi-agent systems with support from the MIT Media Lab, and completed an MBA at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
During his career, PG worked on many important technology projects. At Motorola, he helped develop voice-based navigation and touch screen features that became common in mobile phones and the success of Motorola Razr. At Microsoft, he worked on evolution of Project Red Dog to Microsoft Azure as the world’s computer. He also helped start the Microsoft Accelerator, bringing startup teams from India, China, and Israel together.
Finding New Answers Outside the Technology Industry
Even after years of success in technology, PG felt that human life could not be understood through science alone. He wanted to study bigger questions about time, purpose, and human life.
These experiences inspired him to spend five years exploring philosophy, cosmology, and Indian knowledge systems. He also undertook a 108-site interfaith pilgrimage and embraced periods of solitude in the American wilderness. Together, these journeys shaped the ideas that became his three-book trilogy, completed in the quiet surroundings of Massachusetts.
The Three Books Behind His Ideas
The first book, The Flow of My Life, looks at how family, values, and life experiences shape a person. The second, The Awakenings by the Pond, talks about self-awareness and personal responsibility. The final book, The Intelligence of Time, brings science and philosophy together to discuss how people can live with greater awareness and make better choices.
PG believes Artificial Intelligence and Civilizational wisdom must work side by side. Technology can make life easier and help solve large problems, but people still need good judgment, kindness, and responsibility. In his view, these qualities help people use technology in the right way.
Using Artificial Intelligence to Improve Lives
His work has also reached beyond the technology industry. Over more than a decade, he helped develop AI networks that improved school enrolment, prevented avoidable blindness, and strengthened climate-resilient agriculture. These initiatives were presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, informed India’s National AI Policy, and led to the Global South’s first AI-based Cardiovascular Disease Risk Score (AICVD), developed in partnership with Apollo Hospitals and Maastricht – saving lives and was later cited by the United Nations.
Recognized among India’s Top 50 Influential Authors of 2023, PG now spends much of his time writing and mentoring young people in India and the United States. He calls this vision Conscious Computing—guiding both human intellect and agentic AI toward a future of harmony, agency, meaning, and peaceful coexistence.
Thinking About Time in a New Way
Through The Intelligence of Time, he hopes young readers will see that modern science and civilizational wisdom do not have to compete. When they come together, they can help people build lives with greater purpose, better decisions, and deeper understanding.
