Make AI in India for the World

 With the advent of Generative AI and ChatGPT in particular, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a buzz word – seen as the next big disruptive technology that is transforming the way we live and work. However, AI has been around for long – the term ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) was first used by computer scientist John McCarthy in 1956 at the Dartmouth Conference, where in McCarthy and his colleagues explored how machines could simulate humans and solve problems on their own. The recent advancements in the field has suddenly made AI a hot commodity that almost everyone wants to master and use. 

    With the exponential expansion in compute capabilities and availability of petabytes and exabytes of data, the capabilities of AI systems and algorithms have grown multi-fold – bringing in immense possibilities in addressing challenges in healthcare, climate change, agriculture, education, natural language processing amongst others. While AI has the potential to enable easier and affordable disease diagnosis, increase farm productivity, conserve water, mitigate risks of climate change, enable access to education for all; yet there are risks and challenges that we need to be aware of regarding misuse and abuse of AI that can result in bias and also cause user harm. The threat from misinformation and deep fakes to democracies across the world are real. Governments across the world are mulling over ways and means to walk the tight rope between innovation and regulation. 

    India has a lot at stake as we are amongst the top countries when it comes to AI trained workforce. Stanford AI Index 2023 has ranked India as the top nation in AI Skill penetration. The recent EY report on Generative AI estimates that GenAI can contribute upto 1.5 trillion dollars to our GDP by 2030. It is also estimated to create 5 million new jobs. Our robust AI StartUp ecosystem has attracted investments of more than $ 475 million in last two years. Implementation of Digital transformation projects across sectors has led to generation of large volumes of data that can be leveraged for building AI models for enhancing and augmenting services. 

    This year, we are also the lead chair of Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) and we are at the forefront of driving the discourse around global policy framework for responsible and ethical AI. The New Delhi declaration adopted at the GPAI Ministerial meet in December 2023 focuses on the two new themes proposed by India – Sustainable Agriculture and Collaborative AI for Global Partnerships in addition to the existing GPAI themes of Global Health, Climate Change and Resilient Societies. GPAI along with its expert support centres at Montreal, Paris and Tokyo will take up projects under these thematic areas to help build AI solutions that can benefit the whole world. 

    The declaration also acknowledged concerns around misinformation and disinformation, lack of transparency and fairness, protection of intellectual property and personal data, and threats to human rights and democratic values with indiscrimate use and applications of AI. India’s endeavour to promote collaborative AI for global partnership amongst GPAI Members by supporting projects aimed at promoting equitable access to critical resources for AI research and innovation, such as AI compute, high-quality diverse datasets, algorithms, software, testbeds, and other AI-relevant resources in compliance with applicable intellectual property protections and data protection legislations was specially noted. 

    The GPAI declaration came in the background of G7 leaders’ statement on the Hiroshima AI Process, the Bletchley Declaration, and the G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration, which all have focused on the need for the world to work together, in an inclusive manner, to promote trustworthy AI that supports the good of all. In late October, United States also published their executive order on safe, secure and trustworthy AI that called for new standards for safety and security with an objective to protect privacy and civil rights as also to promote innovation and competition. A few days back, the European Parliament enacted world’s first legislation on AI and laid down a risks and rights framework while encouraging innovation. It also called upon the developers of foundation models to disclose all details including training datasets to the Government. As against this, India’s approach to AI Governance has been to promote innovation while regulating misuse of AI. We see AI as a kinetic enabler and contributor to our digital economy. In line with our approach to Digital Public Infrastructure, we have been advocating leveraging AI for social good and more equitable adoption of AI solutions and applications, especially in the Global South. 

    India’s pitch for Collaborative approach to AI development and regulation was also echoed by the Interim report of the United Nations Advisory Body on AI that calls for a closer alignment between international norms and how AI is developed and rolled out in sovereign nations. The report proposed to strengthen international governance of AI by supporting international collaboration on data, computing capacity and talent to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The report also recommends enhancing accountability and ensuring an equitable voice for all countries. The core principles of Inclusivity, Public Interest, Data Governance and Multistakeholder approach have been emphasised in the Interim report. 

    Given the inflexion point the world is in with regard to both adoption as also regulation of AI, it is essential that we work on building foundation models in Indian languages as also ensure that we are able to navigate supply chain bottlenecks to get the AI Chips needed to build our AI compute infrastructure. This would require investments from both the public and private sector. In addition, given that Generative AI will impact low value jobs, we will need to strengthen our reskilling and upskilling efforts with projects like FutureSkills Prime to ensure that we retain our position as the talent hub for AI jobs. Our efforts in integrating Artificial Intelligence in school and university curriculum are models for the world to replicate. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act and the upcoming Data Governance framework with the India Datasets platform will ensure that we are able to harness the potential of data and use it to build AI solutions. This will help us realise our dream of ‘Make AI in India for the World’.