Context: This century has seen transformational growth in technology. Technology over the last few decades has been rapidly evolving changing the way we think, work and live. When we talk of technology today, the focus is largely on artificial intelligence. Governments and organizations around the world are investing in and focusing heavily on AI. The pandemic has led the world to focus on new solutions for several problems through AI.  In The Big Picture today we will analyse how Artificial Intelligence can be used for social empowerment.

About RAISE 2020

• RAISE 2020- ‘Responsible AI for Social Empowerment 2020,’ is being conducted by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and NITI Aayog.
• It will be a global meeting of minds to exchange ideas and chart a course for using AI for social transformation, inclusion and empowerment in areas like healthcare, agriculture, education and smart mobility, among other sectors.
• Representatives from the global AI industry will hold discussions at the summit.
• Chosen start-ups will also showcase their AI solutions in the summit.

Background

• India is home to the world’s third-largest start-up ecosystem.
• Industry analysts predict that AI could add up to $957 billion to India’s economy by 2035.

Relating India and AI

• In the spirit of Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas India plans to leverage AI for inclusive development, representing the country’s ‘AI for All’ strategy.

RAISE 2020 is a first of its kind, global meeting of minds on Artificial Intelligence to drive India’s vision and roadmap for social transformation, inclusion and empowerment through responsible AI.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• It describes the action of machines accomplishing tasks that have historically required human intelligence.
• It includes technologies like machine learning, pattern recognition, big data, neural networks, self algorithms etc.
• The origin of the concept can be traced back to the greek mythology, although it is only during modern history when stored program electronic computers were developed.
• Example: Million of algorithms and codes are there around the humans to understand their commands and perform human-like tasks. Facebook’s list of suggested friends for its users, a pop-up page, telling about an upcoming sale of the favourite brand of shoes and clothes, that comes on screen while browsing the internet, are the work of artificial intelligence.

A Complex Technology: AI involves complex things such as feeding a particular data into the machine and making it react as per the different situations. It is basically about creating self-learning patterns where the machine can give answers to the never answered questions like a human would ever do.

Benefits

• In Policing: India still has a conventional policing. AI based products open a new window of opportunity to do predictive policing in India. With the help of AI, one can predict the pattern of crime, analyze lot of CCTV footage which are available across the country to identify suspects.
• Government is digitizing all the records, especially the crime records putting it into one single place called CCTNS where all the data including the image, biometrics, or the criminal history of a convict or suspect is available.

In Agriculture: It has many uses, for example, it can help sense one how much water the crop needs.

• AI can be utilised to predict advisories for sowing, pest control, input control = enable increased income and giving stability for the agricultural community.
• Image classification tools in addition to remote and locally sensed data can bring a revolutionary change in – utilisation and efficiency of farm machinery, weed removal, early disease identification, harvesting, and grading.

Medicine: In the medical field also, we will find the wide application of AI. Doctors assess the patients and their health risks with the help of artificial machine intelligence. 

• It educates them about the side effects of various medicines. Medical professionals are often trained with artificial surgery simulators.
• It finds a huge application in detecting and monitoring neurological disorders as it can simulate the brain functions. 
• Robotics is often used in helping mental health patients to come out of depression and remain active. A popular application of artificial intelligence is radiosurgery. Radiosurgery is used in operating tumours and this can actually help in the operation without damaging the surrounding tissues.
• For solving complex issues like efficient utilization of available resources.
• Analyzing the Data: The AI technology helps in analyzing data and thus can improve the efficiency of the systems like power management in cars, mobile devices, weather predictions, video and image analysis.
• Transports, Logistics, and Smart Mobility: This domain mainly includes various autonomous and semi-autonomous features, for example, monitoring and maintaining a predictive engine along with driver-assist. Other applications of AI include improved traffic management, autonomous trucking, and delivery.

Challenges with AI in India

• Absence of collaborative effort between various stakeholders
• Concerns on privacy and security of data, including a lack of formal regulation around anonymization of data.
• Lack of sufficient talent to build and deploy AI systems at scale. An estimate claims that only 4% of AI professionals in India have worked on emerging technologies such as deep learning and neural networks. There is also a significant gap in Ph.D. research scholars in the field.
• Difficulty in access to industry-specific data required to build customized platforms and solutions is now currently in the hands of a few major players. It is challenging for new beginners to provide customized services that can compete with the existing data that includes rich incumbents such as Facebook or Google. This phenomenon results in the creation of a virtuous cycle which reinforces the hegemony of the big few, creating a huge entry barrier for start-ups.
• High cost and low availability of computing infrastructure required for development, training, and deployment of AI-based services. Cloud infrastructure, though growing rapidly, has limited capability.
• Lack of infrastructure is the major reason for many Indian AI start-ups that aims to incorporate their business outside the country, thus, making AI outside the reach of Indian researchers in government labs and many industries. Initiatives like GI Cloud (MeghRaj), are in the right direction.
• Lack of AI awareness in resolving business-related issues in most of the public enterprises and government agencies has led to the scarcity of AI professionals in obstructing adoption.
• Instigating Core and Applied Research in AI: Advanced research, both core and applied, provides the basis for commercialization and utilization of any emerging technology, more so for technologies like AI. A considerable amount of dedication and effort is required to build comprehensive research focusing on AI strategy for India.
• Getting India Ready for the AI Wave: India may appear to be relatively well-positioned to take advantage of the disruption in the AI system through its advanced IT sector and large youth demographic potential to establish itself as the future hub for AI-related activities. However, given the reduced availability of qualified faculty and researchers, this advantage could quickly change into a liability without urgent government interventions towards promoting access to such skills. This is a critical component of AI development and should be a national priority.
• Accelerating Adoption: Adoption of AI in India has been slow and remains limited. Estimates indicate that only 22% of the firms in India use AI in any business process. Government intervention is needed to promote AI adoption, lest India loses the chance to secure a prominent position on the global AI map. While acknowledging the need to improve AI, governments at different levels, along with their various instrumentalities, should adopt proactive measures to accelerate AI adoption in multiple processes.
• Ethics, Privacy, Security, and Artificial Intelligence: AI is going to be the tipping point in the technological evolution of mankind, with human dependence on machines and algorithms for decision making never been such profound. Thus, any strategy document on promoting AI necessarily needs to be conscious of the probable factors of the AI ecosystem that may undermine ethical conduct, impinge on one’s privacy, and undermine the security protocol. Appropriate steps to mitigate these risks need to be an integral part of any such strategy. For e.g., National Cyber Security Policy (NCSP – 2013) talks about the Sensitization of citizens, consumers, and employees on cybersecurity threats and basic and best practices Sensitization towards the safety of cyber threats and in pursuance of security programs.

What is the global status of AI adoption? 

• China and the U.K. estimate that by 2030, about 26% and 10% of their GDPs respectively will be sourced from AI­ related activities and businesses. 
• There have been numerous activities regarding AI policy positions and the development of an AI ecosystem in various countries in recent years. 
• Infrastructural supply-side initiatives have been planned by several countries for building a larger ecosystem of AI development. 
• Even local/city governments have become increasingly aware of the significance and potential of AI and have committed public investments.
• For creating the future workforce for AI, countries are also significantly increasing the allocation of resources for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) talent development via investment in universities, mandating new courses (e.g., AI and law), and launching schemes to retrain people. 
• AI technology development and applications are rapidly evolving with major implications for economies and societies. A study by EY and NASSCOM found that by 2022, about 46 percent of the workforce will be engaged in entirely new jobs.

What are the possible areas for AI applications in Indian conditions? 

• India has the potential to position itself among leaders on the global AI map – with a unique brand of "AIforAll". 
• It can complement Digital India Mission by helping in the big data analysis which is not possible without using AI.
• Targeted delivery of services, schemes, and subsidy can be further fine-tuned. 
• Smart border surveillance and monitoring to enhance security Weather forecasting models may become proactive and therefore preplanning for any future mishaps such as floods, droughts and therefore addressing the farming crisis, farmer’s suicide, crop losses, etc. 
• By analyzing big data of road safety data and NCRB (National Crime Record Bureau) data for crimes, new policies can be formulated.
• Disaster management can be faster and more accessible with the help of robots and intelligent machines.

Government efforts regarding artificial intelligence in India

• National Programme on Artificial Intelligence: It was announced in the Interim Budget 2019. The programme would be catalysed by the establishment of the National Centre on Artificial Intelligence as a hub along with 6 centres of excellence.
• National strategy for AI: NITI Aayog came up with a National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence in India focusing on economic growth and social inclusion. It provides over 30 policy recommendations to invest in scientific research, encourages reskilling and training, accelerates the adoption of AI across the value chains, and promotes ethics, privacy, and security in AI.
• Task Force on Artificial Intelligence: AI Task Force was formed by the Commerce and Industry Department, Government of India that focuses on India’s economic transformation.
• International Center for Transformative Artificial Intelligence: NITI Aayog and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) initiated collaboration to set up International Center for Transformative Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI) to conduct advanced research to incubate AI-led solutions in three important areas– healthcare, agriculture and smart mobility.
• AI 4 All Global Hackathon: NITI Aayog launched AI 4 All Global Hackathon to promote awareness and develop solutions to address the infrastructure challenges, without compromising on the data privacy while training the AI algorithms.
• National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS): It is a programme led by the Union Ministry of Science & Technology to enhance capabilities of cyber-physical systems. Budget 2019 allotted Rs. 5 crore for the mission.

Road Ahead

• Our laws need to be amended or new laws for AI technologies and processes will need to be adopted to fill up existing lacunae in the growing AI space. There is a need to form the basic guidelines which should be met on a national level for any AI activity – indigenous, foreign or even modifications to an open source AI. The guidelines would serve as the foundation for any amendments in the laws or brand new AI laws.
• In addition to developing AI applications and creating a skilled workforce the government needs to prioritize research that examines the complex social, ethical and governance challenges associated with the spread of AI-driven technologies. Blind technological optimism might entrench rather than alleviate the grand Indian challenge of inequity and growth.
• In fact the element of end-to-end ‘human involvement’ has been insisted upon by most AI advanced countries such as Canada, in order to ensure accountability and security of AI systems.
•  ‘Make in India’ programme can be strengthened and help India in becoming a major manufacturing hub with AI-assisted technology.