Day two of the five-day virtual summit on AI- ‘RAISE 2020’ saw some insightful discussions between the best AI minds in India and the world. One such panel titled ‘Education and Awareness for Responsible AI’ highlighted the key concerns in AI adoption and the potential models of awareness generation across the public sector, private sector, academic institutions and the general public. 

Hosted by Mr. Jaideep Mishra, Joint Secretary & Group-Coordinator at Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, the session began with a keynote speech by Mr. Rahul Sharma, President of Amazon Internet Services Public Sector for India and South Asia. The illustrious panel, moderated by Ms. Urvashi Aneja, Founding Director of Tandem Research, consisted of Dr. Rahul Panicker, Chief Research and Innovation Officer at Wadhwani AI, Dr. Rohini Srivathsa, CTO at Microsoft India, Mr. Kye Andersson, Strategist for Major Impact Initiatives at AI Sweden, and Amazon’s Mr. Rahul Sharma. 

Giving a historical perspective of the evolution of AI and ML through Amazon’s 20-year long journey with these technologies, Rahul Sharma in his keynote address noted that “there isn’t a single business function at Amazon that hasn’t been made better through machine learning.” He highlighted the four key elements for enabling wide adoption of responsible AI: Breeding a culture of innovation empowered by Cloud technologies; identifying the right use cases and business problems, and nurturing startups; making available ML-ready open data, and spearheading research and skilling initiatives for AI.

 The panel discussion started with opening remarks from Dr. Rohini Srivathsa who spoke at length about Microsoft’s efforts to keep in check the monumental implications that a technology ,as disruptive as AI, is capable of posing. In addition to identifying six principles for responsible AI as Fairness, Reliability & Safety, Privacy and Security, Inclusiveness, Transparency, and Accountability, Microsoft has, under Satya Nadella’s direct leadership, chartered a course to bring these principles into practice. She hailed the policy initiatives such as WEF’s Global AI Council and NITI’s Responsible AI for ALL working document and called for societal, governmental, academic and international engagement to agree on the question of “what computers should do, not what they can do.”

Dr. Rahul Panicker outlined two aspects of responsible AI in his presentation. Firstly, by positing responsible AI as a behavioural change comparable to wearing seatbelts, he emphasised the need for rules, tools, and norms, explaining each element with examples from the real world. Secondly, he outlined a four-phase evaluation process for AI solutions, the most crucial being the final one, i.e. post-deployment monitoring (such as feedback loops) which mandates the technologists to “take responsibility for the consequences of their creation.”

Kye Andersson brought in a Swedish and EU perspective to the session with his brief presentation on the roles and responsibilities of the Swedish National AI Centre. Terming AI as the second big technological change since the advent of the internet, he hailed it as a societal challenge that needs more beyond merely research efforts in the form of cross-sectoral collaborations. He emphasised the need for proactive and futuristic policy, keeping ‘everyone’ including the future generations in mind. 

As the session progressed into a robust discussion, the panellists answered the audience’s questions on topics ranging from AI regulation and the powers of the state to use of responsible AI in mental health and education sectors. The need to democratise the ongoing AI revolution by including those at the bottom of the pyramid in the design process was identified as paramount, as was the importance of developing and updating micro-skills and deep-skills for building core competencies. Urvashi Aneja gave her valuable insights on the algorithmic amplification and creation of echo chambers on social media and the subsequent need for holding these new-age media platforms accountable to the same standards of journalism as traditional media. 

The panellists busted certain myths about AI and encouraged more and more people to experiment with AI for it has very little to do with just technology and more to do with the ethics and culture of its usage. The idea to leverage the power of storytelling and folklore emerged as useful for generating empathy and awareness around responsible use of AI. The audience was warned against the messages of polarisation, with Mr. Andersson adding that “those with the least have the most to gain from AI.” The panel concluded that going forward, we need to align our tech trajectories and AI regulations with societal and human values, and we need to do it fast because technological progress doesn’t wait for anyone.

Visit the official website of RAISE 2020 https://raise2020.indiaai.gov.in and register to catch all the action as it unfolds at the biggest AI summit of India.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay