NEW DELHI: In a little over two weeks from now, India will kick off the Global Artificial Intelligence Summit, a two-day (January 18-19) event focused on five key areas: defence and cyber security, healthcare, agriculture, education, robotics & automation. It is expected to take forward some of Prime Minister Modi’s ideas reflected at the summit of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) in Delhi last December, where he said: “We have prepared government policies and programmes inspired by the spirit of ‘AI for All’. Our endeavour is to take full advantage of the capabilities of AI for social development and inclusive growth. India is fully committed to responsible and inclusive growth of AI.”
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MoS Electronics and IT, threw more light on the government’s roadmap for AI. “The mission given by PM is very clear. There is this huge opportunity given by a trillion-dollar economy. We are half-way, we want to get there by 2026. AI, semiconductor electronics are big pieces of that. We as government will make sure those ambitions come through not as implemented by government but by hundreds of start-ups, innovators and companies throughout the country,” he said.
Chandrasekhar also announced the launch of an AI Mission for healthcare, education and agriculture. Was he being optimistic? The general view in industry is that India barely figures on the AI map, lacking key capabilities and handicapped by serious technology deficits. Dr C Raja Mohan, well known writer and commentator on strategic and technology issues, clarified these points.
“When it comes to AI, four broad areas are considered necessary: how you rank nations in AI capacities, one is capacity for research which is the foundation of AI, the second is engineering and technological capacity of the country, the third is having large amounts of data, quality data which has integrity and which can be used for generative AI. The fourth is computing power,” he told StratNews Global.
In his view, India scores reasonably well on the first two counts, in terms of some research capacity and India’s talent is the best in the world, scoring high on that point. Much of the world is looking to Indian manpower to build new AI systems, he pointed out.
“But it’s in the third and fourth areas where we have problems,” he said. “Now, the government has data, and the prime minister was saying at the summit of the GPAI that we must make it available. The whole point is what the PM says and what the bureaucracy does. Also, given the diversity of your languages and the data that government has collected, the quality needs to be improved.”
Dr Raja Mohan pointed to another major weakness. “We don’t have enough high performing computers, high performance chips that you don’t produce. It’s all in great demand, you can’t just import them. In fact, the PM said in his speech that he wants to start a new mission that will bridge this gap on the computing side. India needs to build the computing capacity to be a player in the global domain. In the meanwhile, our engineering talent keeps us afloat in the top ranks but we have a lot more to do.”
Chandrasekhar believes these “infrastructure” issues can be sorted out without too much difficulty, while acknowledging the need for the government to deploy finance in creating more models and “real life-use cases”, as in semiconductors. The plan, he elaborated, would be for government to fund start-ups with a clear focus on building an academic industrial research ecosystem.
He doesn’t believe that an ecosystem of this kind will cost ₹70,000 crore as some estimates have projected. Without giving details, he said “in the formula we have designed, we know clearly what is needed to make it globally competitive. We want winners, we believe there will be winners.”
The government also seems clear that the AI model should not result in the kind of toxicity seen on social media. The nature of the Internet and the experience of social media have shown that notwithstanding any country having great rules, laws and regulations (Singapore has that as does Australia), 80 to 90% of cyber harms are extra jurisdictional. There is therefore no way to avoid an understanding of global principles.
The government also seems determined to ensure that the Indian AI framework is not taken from the American or the European frameworks, rather it should be a global framework with legal guardrails and accountability.
Officials appeared confident that India could and should take the lead and shape the future. But there is a need to first create a global standard ecosystem with adequately funded start-ups and innovators backed by academic institutions.
The country will need top-notch capabilities including Ph.Ds and post-doctorals, which means institutions have to gear up to nurture such talent. India would arrive when its students build world class systems and platforms within the country.
Also See:
‘AI Will Be Transformative, India Needs To Seize The Moment’
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