Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
RAISE 2020(Responsible AI for Social Empowerment): A global meeting of minds to exchange ideas and chart a course for using AI for social transformation, inclusion and empowerment in areas like Healthcare, Agriculture, Education and Smart Mobility, among other sectors.
AI is the branch of computer science concerned with developing machines that can complete tasks that typically require human intelligence. With the explosion of available data expansion of computing capacity, the world is witnessing rapid advancements in AI, machine learning and deep learning, transforming almost all sectors of the economy.
According to independent studies, AI has the potential to raise India’s annual growth rate by 1.3% and add USD 957 billion to the country’s economy by 2035.At a global level, AI is expected to unlock USD 15.7 trillion in productivity by 2030.
India has a large young population that is skilled and eager to adopt AI. The country has been ranked second on the Stanford AI Vibrancy Index primarily on account of its large AI-trained workforce. Our leading technology institutes like the IITs, IIITs and NITs have the potential to be the cradle of AI researchers and startups. India’s startups are innovating and developing solutions with AI across education, health, financial services and other domains to solve societal problems.
Key aspects for developing a robust AI framework are:
Legality, efficiency and transparency of data sourcing
Ensuring integrity, privacy and confidentiality of the data collected
Responsible and accountable data access
Putting in place an organized data monetization framework
Expectations from AI –
AI-first businesses: AI will dominate the core of the next exponential enterprises, rewriting the fundamentals of the establishment and this is the opportunity to capture. We are seeing that AI-first businesses are becoming monopolies.
Financial services have been rule-based till date. However, financial institutions are using AI based technologies as ‘Decision Making Support’, which is helping us to really fast-pace the whole process.
UIDAI is developing a face authentication system which will be available to all the Aadhaar holders. The goal is to make it extremely secure and make it available for all smartphone users in the country. The system can then be used by other financial service providers to strengthen their own AI ecosystem.
Making life easier for Differently-abled: Disabilities can be permanent, temporary or situational. By innovating for people with disabilities, we are innovating for us all. By ensuring that technology fulfils its promise to address the broadest societal needs, we can empower everyone – not just individuals with disabilities – to achieve more. We need to focus our efforts on developing AI that makes this world more inclusive, accessible and affordable for the especially-abled.
Economic Growth: The combination of AI and Data can deliver 10% of our USD 10 trillion economy aspiration, or USD 500 billion in value over the next 4-5 years. India is perhaps the only country in the world where the opportunity for AI in agriculture is as large as it is in banking.
AI and Women: AI research is dominated almost entirely by men. Globally, only 22% of AI professionals are women. Now, after COVID 19 has led to rapid digitization, the need to focus on digital inclusion has never been clearer
AI in India
Barriers –
Trust issues
Lack of clarity on development and deployment processes
The Way Forward
Championing a culture of machine learning, identifying use cases, using data, and providing platforms to startups and the public sector to build applications should be the key priority to accelerate responsible Al adoption
There is possibility for ‘responsible’ AI if best practices such as ethical framework, redressal system, open data, collaborations, and others are followed by the ecosystem.
There should be availability of open data and the way to use open data can help the overall progress in the use of machine learning. to be able to rise from fears of AI, companies and organisations need to have the right answers on ‘what computers should do and what computers should not do’, and have strategies in place to keep implementing that in any setup.
Nothing can be perfect and it is impossible to predict all aspects of the technology. Hence, a strong, post-deployment monitoring system is required to have best practices in place when it comes to AI
Key Initiatives by Indian Government
National Artificial Intelligence Portal
It has been jointly developed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM).
It will work as a one stop digital platform for sharing of resources such as articles, startups, investment funds in AI etc.
Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Youth:
By the Ministry of Electronics and IT
It is designed to reach out to students from Government schools pan India and provide them with an opportunity to become part of the skilled workforce in an inclusive manner.
It aims to help reduce the skill gap, while enabling youth to create meaningful social impact solutions.
It also intends to provide a platform for relevant AI skill-sets and access to required AI tool-sets to make youth digitally ready for the future.
It is open to students of class 8th to class 12th from Central and State government-run schools (including KVS, NVS, JNV) from across the country.
It will be implemented in a phase-wise manner.
In its first phase, each State will nominate 10 teachers as per the eligibility criteria.
India joins Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI)
India joined the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI or Gee-Pay) as a founding member to support the responsible and human-centric development and use of Artificial
It is an international and multi-stakeholder initiative to guide the responsible development and use of AI taking into account human rights, inclusion, diversity, innovation, and economic growth.
This is also a first initiative of its type which involves better understanding of the challenges and opportunities around AI using the experience and diversity of participating countries.
It will be supported by a Secretariat.
It will be hosted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, as well as by two Centers of Expertise- one each in Montreal and Paris.
India has a unique advantage to harness its enormous digital capital for AI-driven development, which is “bottom-up and inclusive”. Do you agree? Explain.
How can artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques help in improving e-governance? Illustrate with the help of suitable examples.
