India's Ambitious Plan to Democratize AI: Balancing Innovation and Regulation

Democratising AI: GoI's role in regulation, innovation is key

Democratisation of AI is not free of internal conflict. This arises from how stakeholders approach democratisation of use, development, profits and governance. Any democratisation effort that works on AI technology or its market derives value from aligning with the interests of those who will be affected. The work must begin with the democratisation of governance and the rest of the processes will evolve as a corollary. The downsides of a new tech need to be protected through government intervention so that dispersal, development and dividends are not inimically affected.India's growing role in AI applications positions it as a key player in democratising the technology, as IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw highlighted at the ET Startup Awards last week. Any approach that seeks to make AI accessible to all, including individuals and organisations that do not have the technical capabilities to run AI applications, would have to set out progressive benchmarks on intellectual property rights. The idea is to create a universal ability to experiment with AI programming. The constraints are privacy, confidentiality and competitiveness. The regulatory framework around these constraints guides the openness of AI and pushes the tech frontier outward by driving down costs. Governments have a critical role in shaping the development of AI and India leads by example in affordable access, ensuring abstraction and enabling control of stack elements. Yet, democratisation of AI is not free of internal conflict. This arises from how stakeholders approach democratisation of use, development, profits and governance. Any democratisation effort that works on AI technology or its market derives value from aligning with the interests of those who will be affected. The work must begin with the democratisation of governance and the rest of the processes will evolve as a corollary. The downsides of a new tech need to be protected through government intervention so that dispersal, development and dividends are not inimically affected. Broadly, AI is expected to increase the world's consumer surplus. How this surplus is divided among those with and without access to tech is a job for governments. India's approach has been to harness any available technology locally while redistributing gains to the deprived. This is as good an approach to AI governance as it gets. Putting an emerging tech to work towards creating a more inclusive society should be the guiding principle for AI democratisation across the world.

India Plans 'Democratised' AI, on Track to Provide to World

India is becoming the artificial intelligence (AI) application service provider to the world, Union minister for IT, railways and information & broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw told delegates at The Economic Times Startup Awards (ETSA) in Bengaluru on Saturday, underscoring the industry's increasingly visible role in helping negotiate challenges as diverse and complex as drug discovery and climate change.India is becoming the artificial intelligence (AI) application service provider to the world, Union minister for IT, railways and information & broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw told delegates at The Economic Times Startup Awards (ETSA) in Bengaluru on Saturday, underscoring the industry's increasingly visible role in helping negotiate challenges as diverse and complex as drug discovery and climate change. "A large number of applications are coming up from the industry in health, climate tech, drug discovery and industrial applications," Vaishnaw said at the 10th edition of ETSA. All sections of society would be able to benefit from the IndiaAI Mission, the Centre's ₹10,000-crore masterplan to promote the tech, he said. "Our approach in the AI mission is democratising technology. The Prime Minister has mandated the technology be accessible to all the startups, academia, researchers and students. It cannot be monopolised by a handful," the minister said. Public investments create an infrastructure that can be used by a number of people, he said. In a fireside chat with The Economic Times executive editor Sruthijith KK, Vaishnaw added that the government would make sure technology innovation would not be impacted by AI regulations, allaying a key concern from multiple players in the sector. "We have two models of AI regulation - the US and the European. I honestly think some countries have put too much regulation on AI. I don't think that is the right way to go," said the minister. "The way we created structures in our data privacy and telecom laws, we allowed the space for innovation to flourish, while we made sure the harms are fully controlled. That will be the approach we will adopt in AI regulation." Vaishnaw said India could adopt a cost-efficient approach to creating AI infrastructure. "There is a view that creating a new model would require $50-60 billion capital. But some people have a different approach to building (that) with less capital," he pointed out. Referring to a recent roundtable of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and top technology industry CEOs in New York, the minister said three chief executives had said they haven't seen this kind of enthusiasm for any country in the last 35-40 years. He reiterated that the Idaho-based Micron Technology will roll out the first made-in-India memory chips by early 2025. He also gave a status check about the progress of other chip packaging facilities. "The CG Power (Sanand) facility should also come up very fast. Construction work is going on. In Tata's ATMP facility in Assam, construction work is going on very well," he said. On India's first chip fabrication unit in Gujarat's Dholera, Vaishnaw said the technology agreement between Tata Electronics and Taiwan's Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp was signed a few weeks ago. "What we are seeing is the ecosystem for about 200-odd players who must come in, their entire initial hesitance... and the thoughts they had have all got converted into -- this is the next big semiconductor destination. That is something they feel comfortable about," Vaishnaw said. The minister said the country currently has $120 billion worth of electronics manufacturing and that the government is now focused on bringing in electronic components manufacturing. Eight sub-modules where we can have large-scale production have been identified, he said. In his welcome address, Times Internet vice-chairman Satyan Gajwani said, "It's all of you gathered here today who help mentor and invest in each other, and build great companies together. It's this spirit of entrepreneurship that this city exemplifies. In bringing attention and recognition to this ecosystem, I think the ET Startup Awards has played a small role in building the cycle of paying it forward."