Artificial intelligence and opportunities for Indian economy GS: 3 "EMPOWER IAS"

 

 

In news:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform the Indian economy. In the last few years, India made significant progress in its adoption. However, there are several areas India need to focus on to make the most of what AI offers.

 

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.

 

 

AI is a Different Technology

• AI is different from hardware driven robotic automation. Instead of automating manual tasks, AI performs frequent high volume computerised tasks reliably.
• AI is often misunderstood for machine learning. AI is a broader concept with a bunch of technologies that include machine learning and other technologies like natural language processing, inference algorithms, neutron networks etc

 

AI adoption and capacity building in India

• NITI Aayog’s national strategy for AI envisages ‘AI for all’ for inclusive growth.
• NITI Aayog identifies healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities and infrastructure, and smart mobility and transportation as focus areas for AI-led solutions for social impact.
• The Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra governments, among others, have announced policies and strategies for AI adoption.
• Technology companies have established AI centres of excellence to create solutions for global clients.
• India has a thriving AI start-up ecosystem.
• Our talent pool in AI/ML (Machine Learning) is fast-growing, with over 5,00,000 people working on these technologies at present.

 

Benefits:

• NITI Aayog estimates that adopting AI means a 15% boost for the gross value added (GVA) for the economy by 2035.
• AI can increase access and affordability of quality healthcare.
• In agriculture, it can contribute towards enhancing farmers’ income, increase farm productivity and reduce wastage.
• It can also improve access and quality of education.
• It can help build efficient infrastructure for the increasing urban population.
• Develop smarter and safer modes of transportation to address traffic and congestion problems.
• AI could create jobs in the country that would be higher than the number of jobs becoming redundant due to innovation in technology.
• Increase efficiency and enhance governance across the government.
• Helps in improving the ease of doing business, as well as making the lives of people simpler.
• ‘Make in India’ programme can be strengthened and help India in becoming a major manufacturing hub with AI-assisted technology.

 

AI will boost Indian economy

• Nasscom believes that data and AI will contribute $450 billion-$500 billion to India’s GDP by 2025, which is around 10% of the government’s aspiration of a $5 trillion economy.
• The growing AI economy will create employment opportunity by creating an estimated over 20 million technical roles.
• AI can create not just niche solutions to specific problems that banks and other service providers are deploying, such as speeding up loan application processing or improving customer service; it can also provide solutions for better governance and social impact.
• AI can create not just niche solutions to specific problems that banks and other service providers are deploying, such as speeding up loan application processing or improving customer service; it can also provide solutions for better governance and social impact.

 

Steps taken by the Government

• In 2018-19 budget, the government mandated NITI Aayog to establish the National Program on AI with a view to guiding research and development in new and emerging technologies.

• NITI Aayog then adopted a three pronged approach undertaking exploratory proof of concept AI projects in various areas, crafting a national strategy for building a vibrant AI ecosystem in India and collaborating with various experts and stakeholders.
• On 20th March, 2019, NITI Aayog circulated the cabinet note to establish a cloud computing platform called AIRAWAT (Artificial Intelligence Research, Analytics and Knowledge Assimilation Platform.

• The note circulated by NITI Aayog proposes that the government should pump in Rs. 7,500 crore rupees over 3 years as well as set up a high-level task force that will oversee the roll out and implementation of AI.
• The move to create cloud computing platform is part of the government’s goal of making India a pioneer amongst emerging economies with regards to AI and transform sectors like education, health, agriculture, urbanization and mobility.

• In Budget 2018, the government announced funds to support the country’s AI, machine learning, robotics and IoT sector.
• As part of the initiative, NITI Aayog in the year 2018, published a draft National Strategy for AI, planning its scope for research, adoption and commercialization.
• It envisioned AI use case clearly in the sectors like healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities and infrastructure, smart mobility and transportation.
• The Commerce and Industry Ministry has also set up task forces to explore the use of AI and Big Data technologies in the country.
• In the Budget 2019-20, the government has announced setting up of a National Sports Education Board under Khelo India to prepare youth for new age skills, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Big Data, 3D Printing, Virtual Reality etc.

Challenges to Adoption of Artificial Intelligence

• Lack of enabling data ecosystems
•  Low intensity of AI research
• Core research in fundamental technologies
• Transforming core research into market application
•  Inadequate availability of AI expertise, manpower and skilling opportunities.
• High resource cost and low awareness for adopting AI in business processes
•  Unclear privacy, security and ethical regulations.
• Unattractive Intellectual Property regime to incentivise research and adoption of AI

 

Way forward: Focus on 3 areas

1)Talent development

• In 2019, we nearly doubled our AI workforce to 72,000 from 40,000 the year before.
• However, the demand continues to outpace the supply.
• That means our efforts to develop talent must pick up speed.

 

2) Policies around data

• Without data, there cannot be AI.
• However, we need a balanced approach in the way we harness and utilise data.
• We need a robust legal framework that governs data and serves as the base for the ethical use of AI.

 

3) Providing the right amount of training data

• Though the use of digital technologies has gone up, the level of digitisation continues to be low.
• This poses a big challenge for organisations in finding the right amount of training data to run AI/ML algorithms, which in turn affects the accuracy of the results.
• Then there is the problem of availability of clean datasets.
• Organisations need to invest in data management frameworks that will clean their data before they are analysed, thus vastly improving the outcomes of AI models.