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Taking a Responsible Route to India’s AI Vision
Taking a Responsible Route to India’s AI Vision

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming the most pervasive and transformative technology of our times - with almost no industry, work or aspect of our lives remaining untouched. Rapid advances over the last decade in AI as well as data capture and analytics technologies have unlocked tremendous possibilities from autonomous vehicles, automated content generation, self-running factories to drug discovery.  Last year saw an inflection point in AI adoption as nations and organizations responded to COVID pandemic through AI-enabled solutions for touchless interactions, remote working, and digital commerce.  

This pace of growth in AI adoption has brought back the focus on long held concerns around its broader economic, social, and environmental impact.  With its uncanny ability to mimic or exceed human-level perception, analysis and reasoning skills (albeit in narrow boundaries for now), and impending possibility of taking over human decision-making within sectors like public services, law enforcement, financial services etc., AI may have far reaching impact on our individual lives and society in general. A set of global industry and government initiatives try to establish guidelines for responsible AI - a nomenclature that spans ethics, trust, transparency, privacy, accountability, and societal aspects around AI.

Within India, the National Strategy on AI (published 2018) identified key sectors for AI-led development and growth and set the vision to make India "AI Garage" for 40 percent of the world by leveraging its scale, huge talent pool (India ranks third in AI world-wide research), and an agile IT services industry. To achieve that vision, India needs to establish an effective framework for responsible AI, that enables inclusive access to AI-led benefits and opportunities, while adequately taking care of personal data protection, privacy, fairness and eliminating threat of malicious use. 

This is easier said than done since applying responsible AI principles inherently requires trade-offs between privacy and consumer value, interpretability and accuracy, and conflicting perceptions of fairness and bias. This complexity cannot be addressed by simply adapting global standards and principles to Indian context. Rather it will require a deeper insight into AI and its ethical, societal, and economic implications from an India-specific point of view and taking an industry approach to standards and policies. While the government has a pivotal role towards establishing a regulatory framework for responsible AI, the part played by and concerns of all other stakeholder in the AI ecosystem, need to be acknowledged and addressed. From a consumer perspective, it is important to build trust and transparency through explain-ability of and accountability for AI-driven decisions in public and financial services, law enforcement and healthcare. There is also a need for ensuring individual privacy and control over personal data through well-defined data protection laws. Civil society has a key role in flagging such consumer-centric ethical issues, policy gaps and malicious use of AI, as well as potential adverse economic and social impact. Academia has a role in pursuing ethical and human-centric AI research agenda.

Corporates have the responsibility to adhere to local regulations, and meeting consumer and community expectations in terms of ensuring privacy, robustness, explain-ability and transparency when leveraging AI for their business needs. This requires them to strike a delicate balance between business interests, consumer trust and societal considerations, while navigating various ethical, compliance and brand risks involved. Indian organizations are still in early stages of their AI adoption journey, and as they embark upon their AI-led transformation initiatives, they will need to establish two key capabilities to address these expectations. First is adoption of standardised, responsible AI engineering practices, by embedding robustness, explainability, and fairness as an integral part of their data management, AI design, assurance and DevOps processes. Second is a formal AI governance process led by a Chief Ethics Officer to establish corporate ethical standards specially around those aspects that cannot be adequately regulated, and proactively assess and mitigate potential ethical and compliance risks.

As a vibrant democracy, India has a strong foundation for Ethical AI already existing in the fundamental rights enshrined in its constitution as well as existing regulatory framework and social welfare policies. With adequate participation and active collaboration across government, academia, corporates as well as civil society, a responsible approach to power India's AI aspirations can be formulated. This approach should achieve the right balance between regulation vis-a-vis innovation, and economic incentives vis-a-vis social responsibility, as well as protect the interest of all stakeholders.

About the Author:

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Nagendra Kumar is a Digital Strategist and Principal Innovation Evangelist with TCS' Business & Technology Services, with specific focus on Semantic AI, Advanced Analytics and Cognitive Automation. In his current role, he works with TCS research, business units, product teams, customers, and partner ecosystem towards conceptualization of IP-led solution offerings and Co-Innovation around emerging technologies.

 

 


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