While giving an exclusive interview with The Week magazine, MoS Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar explained the importance and growth of AI in India. He said, AI has evolved into sophisticated learning models from neural networks to AGI. According to him, ChatGPT is a tool that is expanding in various ways and at extraordinary velocity. This AI is expected to disrupt many conventional technologies, especially businesses. He pointed out that AI and automatic natural language translation, the Digital India Bhashini platform, which the Narendra Modi government put forward, could significantly disrupt the content creation space as well.

“I have said that AI will be the kinetic enabler of the digital economy and tech innovation. It will also deeply improve governance and digital government. In governance in particular, AI can and will play a transformational role in improving design and efficacy of government programmes from bridging the digital divide to civic delivery in a more effective manner,” said the minister.

The minister proclaimed that under IndiaAI, the government would launch three AI Centres of Excellence and the largest public accessible datasets program called India Datasets Program. The datasets exhibit India’s consumers with a huge opportunity for the next generation of AI and Machine Learning algorithms and, if leveraged properly, is an estimated opportunity of $200 to $500 billion. He says the government can use it to create better-targeted policies while AI researchers can look at technology solutions.

He believes that India has tremendous applications that will make the next generation of governance, healthcare, agriculture and innovation more impactful, efficient, targeted and with more lasting outcomes, making India a global leader in the field. He mentioned our country’s chairmanship of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) is a recognition of India’s leadership in the critical area. As per the recent report of NASSCOM on the State of Data Science and AI skills in India, our country ranks first in AI skill penetration and talent concentration and fifth in AI scientific publications.

India’s AI skills penetration factor was reported as 3.09, which is the highest among G20 and OECD countries. More than 1,900 AI-focused start-ups are building innovation in the country, mainly in the areas of conversational AI, NLP, video analytics, disease detection, fraud prevention and deep fakes, the minister added.

The minister further said, “the government wants to catalyse this sector; therefore, in addition to the India Datasets Program, we will also be launching a comprehensive programme called the IndiaAI, and you will see AI deeply embedded and layered on the India stack-Aadhaar, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), DigiLocker, Cowin and more.