• NITI Aayog has published an ambitious discussion paper on kickstarting the artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem in India.

What is Artificial intelligence?

• Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans.
• It uses computers to mimic human cognitive processes for decision-making.
• Some of the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed for include- speech recognition, learning, planning, problem solving.

What is Union government's decision on AI?

• The paper published by the Niti Aayog discusses the powers of five sectors agriculture, education, health care, smart cities/infrastructure and transport with AI.
• It highlights the potential for India to become an AI ‘garage’, or solutions provider, for 40% of the world.
• The paper recommends AI tools for a range of applications such as reading cancer pathology reports, rerouting traffic in smart cities, telling farmers where to store their produce, and picking students at high risk of dropping out from school, among them.
• The paper proposes an institutional structure to get things going including a network of basic and applied research institutions, and a CERN-like multinational laboratory that would focus on global AI challenges.

What are the challenges in achieving India's goals on AI?

• These are lofty goals when the present scenario of AI expertise in India is considered.
• While the paper estimates 50 top notch AI researchers, only 4% of the Indian AI professionals are trained in emerging technologies such as deep learning.
• According to the H Index which measures how often papers are published, even though India does publish a lot, these publications aren’t very impactful and India is behind 18 countries in the H Index.
• Therefore it cannot be relied on astechnology has tripped up as often as it has delivered.

Examples of Artificially Intelligent Technologies

• Robotic process automation: Automation is the process of making a system or processes function automatically. Robots can be programmed to perform high-volume, repeatable tasks normally performed by humans and further it is different from IT automation because of its agility and adaptability to the changing circumstances.
• Natural language processing (NLP) is the processing of human language and not computer language by a computer program. For Example, spam detection, which looks at the subject line and the text of an email and decides if it’s junk.
• Pattern recognition is a branch of machine learning that focuses on identifying patterns in data.
• Machine vision is the science of making computers visualize by capturing and analyzing visual information using a camera, analog-to-digital conversion, and digital signal processing. It is often compared to human eyesight, but machine vision isn’t bound by biology and can be programmed to see through walls. It is used in a range of applications from signature identification to medical image analysis.
• Machine learning: Field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.  Deep learning is a subset of machine learning and can be thought of as the automation of predictive analytics.
• Robotics is a field of engineering focused on the design and manufacturing of robots. Robots are often used to perform tasks that are difficult for humans to perform or perform consistently.

Applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Healthcare Sector: Machine learning is being used for faster, cheaper and more accurate diagnosis and thus improving patient outcomes and reducing costs. For Example, IBM Watson and chatbots are some of such tools.
• Business Sector: To take care of highly repetitive tasks Robotic process automation is applied which perform faster and effortlessly than humans. Further, Machine learning algorithms are being integrated into analytics and CRM platforms to provide better customer service. Chatbots being used into the websites to provide immediate service to customers. Automation of job positions has also become a talking point among academics and IT consultancies such as Gartner and Forrester.
• Education Sector: AI can make some of the educational processes automated such as grading, rewarding marks etc. therefore giving educators more time. Further, it can assess students and adapt to their needs, helping them work at their own pace. AI may change where and how students learn, perhaps even replacing some teachers.
• Financial Sector: It can be applied to the personal finance applications and could collect personal data and provide financial advice. In fact, today software trades more than humans on the Wall Street.
• Legal Sector: Automation can lead to faster resolution of already pending cases by reducing the time taken while analyzing cases thus better use of time and more efficient processes.
• Manufacturing sector: Robots are being used for manufacturing since a long time now, however, more advanced exponential technologies have emerged such as additive manufacturing (3D Printing) which with the help of AI can revolutionize the entire manufacturing supply chain ecosystem.
• Intelligent Robots − Robots can perform the tasks given by a human because of sensors to detect physical data from the real world such as light, heat, temperature, movement, sound, bump, and pressure. Moreover, they have efficient processors, multiple sensors and huge memory, to exhibit intelligence. Further, they are capable of learning from their errors and therefore can adapt to the new environment.
• Gaming – AI has a crucial role in strategic games such as chess, poker, tic-tac-toe, etc., where the machine can think of a large number of possible positions based on heuristic knowledge.
• Speech Recognition – There are intelligent systems that are capable of hearing and grasping the language in terms of sentences and their meanings while human talks to it. It can handle different accents, slang words, noise in the background, change in human’s noise due to cold, etc.
• Cyber Security: In the 20th conference on e-governance in India it was discussed that AI can provide more teeth to cyber security and must be explored.

What are the downsides and risks of Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

• The decrease in demand for human labour due to machines and intelligent robots taking over the jobs in the manufacturing and the services sectors. For Example: In china some customs officers are now robots, In japan robots as housemaid is emerging trend.

• Existential risks: Stephen Hawkins has once said “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Once humans develop artificial intelligence, it will take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded”.
• AI technologies falling into terrorist hands may unleash modern terror network including machine and therefore vulnerability of humans may magnify.
• It may lead to moral degradation in society due to decreased human to human interactions.
• In such an era of rapid and disruptive changes, many questions arise: will these technological changes be accompanied by equally profound economic, social and cultural changes? Will technology destroy jobs at a faster rate than the rate of creation of jobs? Will future governments be forced to fork out Universal Basic Income? How could education be redefined with artificial intelligence, big data, augmented reality and personalized learning pathways? Are conventional manufacturing plants under threat with the advent of additive manufacturing? What will be the impact on skills required? After all these changes, people-to-people communication and socio-economic activities remain the same?