ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN INDIA

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are going to be the most powerful agents of transformation in human history. AI will reshape the global economy, technological landscape and every aspect of our daily lives. India as the fourth-largest economy in the world and a young nation, it is imperative to be prepared to answer the challenges of AI and to leverage it to solve social problems, in building towards the economic prosperity.

 

Before addressing the challenges and opportunities for India, it is critical to understand what has changed in the field of AI in recent times. The answer lies in what experts of the industry refer to as Moore’s law and its broader impact on the computing space. This maxim states that the number of transistors in computer chips doubles every two years, meaning that computer power increases and the relative cost of computer hardware decreases at an exponential pace; the fruit of this relation—faster and cheaper computing power coupled with the diminishing size of computer hardware—has had a decisive impact on AI

 

We use the capability theory framework to illustrate how AI firms in India are currently building skills, organizing and utilizing research and resources needed to run and test AI applications. We also explore the capability of AI firms in India to form networks that finance and market their products and services, that links the firm to the economy at large, and enables the diffusion of AI across the economy. We observe that at the root of all benefits stemming from AI-based applications are AI’s ability to predict across a range of tasks. Examples of AI innovations across sectors
find its positive impact on organizational efficiency that manifests in reduced time and costs, for various business processes, and enhanced quality control. There are also several interesting applications of AI in the social sector that impact a range of development and governance outcomes such as law enforcement, improvements in health and education, utilization of natural resources, etc. Going by the nature of private and public interest in AI and the kinds of AI-based applications being developed, India is carving out a niche in the global ecosystem, deploying AI applications.

The rise of AI however, comes with several statutory warnings. Firstly, recent advances in AI have raised concerns around the use of complex AI systems that are applied without revealing details of the data used to train the model or the algorithm design that forms the basis of predictions. Such applications run the risk of leading to unfair and /or incorrect decisions if they are used in contexts for which they were not designed. Without careful upfront design and safety precautions, some AI systems may also be prone to error or breakdown when introduced to minor perturbations in data, representing situations that are beyond the scope of their training. Ongoing monitoring and
fail-safe designs are therefore vital, especially in safety-critical systems such as self-driving cars, and military applications. Secondly, since AI by nature is labour substituting, immediate consequences of AI, take the form of inequality between labour and capital, and inequality within labor, i.e. between tasks with high and low skill content, raising contentious public policy concerns. However, the form this takes and the impact on human employment will depend on the way organizations deploy AI tools and training.

Prof. Dharmendra Mangal

Assistant Professor

Computer Science Engineering