NEWS  Lockdown amidst pandemic have led to a boom in Internet consumption. According to the Department of Telecommunications, Internet consumption in India rose by 13% after the lockdown was announced. Higher consumption has generated goldmines of user data that online businesses can harness.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AI is a constellation of technologies that enable machines to act with higher levels of intelligence and emulate the human capabilities of sense, comprehend and act.

AI adoption and capacity building in India

• We have made significant progress in AI capability ­building in the past few years through government initiatives and private sector investments.
• Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra governments, among others, have announced policies and strategies for AI adoption.
• Technology companies have established AI centres of excellence to create solutions for global clients.
• India has a thriving AI start-up ecosystem.
• Our talent pool in AI/ML (Machine Learning) is fast-growing.

AI  AND INDIAN ECONOMY

• Nasscom believes that data and AI will contribute $450 billion-$500 billion to India’s GDP by 2025, which is around 10% of the government’s aspiration of a $5 trillion economy.
• The growing AI economy will create employment opportunities by creating an estimated over 20 million technical roles.
• It has the potential to provide solutions for better governance and social impact.

 ADVANTAGES OF AI

• Human Error is reduced as the decisions are taken from the previously gathered information applying a certain set of algorithms.
• AI robots can overcome many risky limitations of humans e.g., going to mars, defuse a bomb, explore the deepest parts of oceans etc
• AI is powering many inventions, which will help humans solve the majority of complex problems.
• AI alongside other technologies enables faster decision making.
• AI can extend the effective working hours of machines without major break.
• Apart from above uses AI can be used in the agricultural, financial, medical, space, educational and service sectors.

DISADVANTAGES OF AI

• Creation of AI machinery and its regular upgradation is a costly affair.
• It can be used to know our mobility history and patterns, or anything of anyone’s mundane life pattern, thus can be a threat to right to privacy.
• It can lead to problems of technological unemployment, where people’s jobs are replaced by intelligent machines.
• Gap in supply and demand of skilled workforce. 
• Despite efficient working , machines cannot develop human bonds and emotions leading the ethical issues in future.
• Since machines can perform only those tasks which they are designed or programmed to do, thus lacks out of box thinking.

 WAY FORWARD

• Need for efforts to develop talent must pick up speed as we lack a skilled workforce as per demand.
• Need a balanced approach in the way we harness and utilise data, as without data, there cannot be AI.
• Need a robust legal framework that governs data and serves as the base for the ethical use of AI.
• Organisations need to invest in data management frameworks that will clean their data before they are analysed, thus vastly improving the outcomes of AI models.

GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES 

• NITI Aayog’s National strategy for AI envisages ‘AI for all’ for inclusive growth and identifies healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities and infrastructure, and smart mobility and transportation as focus areas for AI-led solutions for social impact.
• Recently, India has joined the ‘Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI)’ as a founding member to support the responsible and human-centric development and use of AI.
• The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had launched a “Responsible AI for Youth” programme this year in April, wherein more than 11,000 students from government schools completed the basic course in AI.

CONCLUSION

The future for AI looks promising but to convert the potential into reality, India will need better strategies around talent development, stronger policies for data usage and governance, and more investments in creating a technology infrastructure that can truly leverage AI.

Reference:

1. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-rise-of-the-ai-economy/article33282408.ece