“Amazing new applications of NLP would include conversational AI that could become tutors for children, companions for the elderly, customer service for corporations, and help-line agents for people.”

― Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

2022 has indeed been the year when generative and conversational AI became mainstream. OpenAI offerings like ChatGPT and Dall.E-2 became a rage and enabled more people to experience the power of Artificial Intelligence. Our efforts to Integrate Bhashini (National Language Translation Mission) with some AI tools led to innovations in experiential AI. 

AI adoption in India is at an inflexion point. We have been ranked 1st for ‘AI Adoption by Organisations’ and 7th for ‘Number of newly funded AI companies’ (2013-21) by the Stanford AI Index 2022. The same Index places India 3rd for ‘No. of AI Journal Publications’ and ‘No. of AI Conferences’. Further, India has been ranked 1st in all 5 Pillars of Peak AI’s Decision Intelligence Maturity Scale, which assesses a business’s commercial AI readiness. 

Given this, we need to pause and assess: How do we ensure that the potential of AI is harnessed not just for entertainment, art, etc., but also for large-scale social transformation and inclusive development?

Democratising the benefits of AI 

The Government of India has taken concrete steps to encourage the adoption of AI responsibly and build public trust in using this technology, placing the idea of ‘AI for All’ at the core of our National Strategy for AI. Our approach to AI is deeply rooted in the ethic of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas and Sabka Prayas. 

Using the power of AI, we are creating applications that unlock value for citizens and improve public service delivery. For example, MyGov Helpdesk – an AI-enabled chatbot on WhatsApp, empowered people with Covid related information and vaccination and now provides access to Digilocker documents. Bhashini uses the power of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to make the internet and digital governance more accessible. 

Umang, the government app for citizens to access all its services, has launched its voice-based chatbot. The bot, built using conversational AI technologies, allows users to ask questions in Hindi and English, and through voice or text, about various government services. These initiatives are empowering the Digital Nagrik and transforming government-citizen engagement. 

2023 – Year of INDIAai

While India has made grade strides in making itself strong in the global AI race, the INDIAai story has only just begun. With India’s comprehensive program on AI, ‘INDIAai’, slated to launch this year, 2023 is set to be the year of AI for India. 

INDIAai will further strengthen the foundational building blocks for catalysing AI Innovation in India through its four pillars. 

• The first pillar of INDIAai is the Data Management Office. Recognising data as the fundamental building block for AI Innovation, INDIAai will set up the Data Management Office to improve data quality, use, and access. This would modernise the government’s data collection, processing and access practices to ensure the AI innovation ecosystem reaches its full potential. 
• The second pillar is the National Centre on AI. The last decade has seen a proliferation of AI solutions that have the potential to transcend traditional development challenges and bring about socio-economic transformation. However, most AI solutions cannot break the Proof of Concept (POC) barrier and progress to large-scale deployment. The NCAI will be a sector-agnostic entity that identifies AI solutions for social good and ensures national-level deployment. 
• The third pillar focuses on Skilling for AI. The advent of AI and its accelerated adoption is disrupting the nature of jobs & skillsets required. This disruption disproportionately impacts those at the bottom of the skills qualification pyramid. INDIAai aims to transform ITIs and Polytechnics to ensure India’s technical education infrastructure is positioned to mitigate this disruption and create the next wave of an AI-ready workforce. 
• The final pillar focuses on Responsible AI. As the adoption of AI in developing digital solutions accelerates, so does the potential for bias and discrimination of AI against individuals and social groups that can potentially undo the merits of leveraging this technology for good. Consequently, there is a need for proactive mitigation of risks that can threaten the safety of and discriminate against individuals/groups. INDIAai’s Responsible AI component aims to fill these gaps and implement the principles under the Responsible AI for ALL initiative. 

Shaping Global Policy Discourse 

Emerging economies house 85% of the world’s population yet are often underrepresented in the global discourse around emerging technologies. This often leads to the development of international standards, principles, guidelines, and governance models that are not aligned with the needs of the developing world, overlooking the issues that primarily impact the Global South. 

Housing one-sixth of humanity, and with its immense diversity of languages, religions, customs and beliefs, India is perfectly positioned to play a vital role in global leadership and make global policy discourse on AI and emerging technologies more inclusive and representative. 

As one of the largest Global South economies leading the AI race, India has been entrusted with the responsibility of council chair for the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) for a 3-year tenure (Incoming chair in 2022-23, lead chair in 2023-24 and outgoing chair in 2024-25). Our demonstrated commitment to catalysing AI innovation in alignment with the principles of responsible AI played an instrumental role in helping India win this position through a two-thirds majority of first-preference votes. 

As the Council Chair of GPAI, India will provide a holistic and inclusive partnership guide. Being the only South Asian and the only Middle Income Country among GPAI’s 29 member countries, India is uniquely positioned to add fresh perspectives and provide holistic guidance to the GPAI council and the expert working groups. This would ensure GPAI projects and outputs are relevant for both the developed and the developing world. 

India may also use this opportunity to take its National AI Institutes & AI CoEs Global. Currently, GPAI only has two expert support centres/CoEs, one in Montreal (CEIMIA) and one in Paris (INREA). India’s National Centre for AI aims to deploy AI solutions in critical sectors such as Health, Agriculture, and Education to catalyse large-scale social transformation. The commonality of issues concerning the above sectors across developing and developed countries provides the ideal opportunity for India to be the AI Garage for the world. 

 India’s presidency of GPAI comes at a time when India also has the G20 Presidency. This presents an opportunity to showcase India’s AI Prowess, Solutions, & Governance Models to the world. Through its unique approach to governance of Data and Emerging technologies, India has demonstrated how these can be harnessed to develop public digital platforms to build citizen-centric solutions at a population scale. These governance models that are better suited to the Global South, along with learnings from India’s AI for All approach, may be showcased on the global stage to promote their widespread adoption.