The Rise of the AI economy

Context: With the rise of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) amid pandemic, three areas need attention if India is aiming to become the AI powerhouse of the world.

Potential for AI in India:

• Economic boost:
  • Rising internet consumption: According to the Department of Telecommunications, Internet consumption in India rose by 13% after the lockdown was announced.
  • Data and AI will contribute $450 billion-$500 billion to India’s GDP by 2025. (10% of the aspirational $5 trillion economy)
  • Thrust will come from three key segments: consumer goods and retail, agriculture, and banking and insurance.
• Employment: Estimated to create over 20 million technical roles;
  • Rising talent pool: with over 5,00,000 people working on these technologies; In 2019, we nearly doubled our AI workforce to 72,000 from 40,000 in 2018.
• Applications of AI:
  • Thriving AI start-up ecosystem: In areas such as cancer screening, smart farming and conversational AI for the use of enterprises.
  • Providing niche solutions to specific problems: that banks and other service providers are deploying, such as speeding up loan application processing or improving customer service.
  • For better governance and social impact: g., During the lockdown, the Telangana police used AI-enabled automated number plate recognition software to catch violations.

Measures taken by the various governments:

• National strategy for AI: By NITI Aayog- Envisages ‘AI for all’ for inclusive growth.
  • Focus areas: Healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities and infrastructure, and smart mobility and transportation.
• State governments: Like Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Maharashtra among others have announced policies and strategies for AI adoption.

Way forward: Three areas need attention:

1. Talent development: Meeting rising demand with the right talent.
2. Policy formulation:

• • A balanced approach: in the way we harness and utilize data.
  • Robust legal framework: that governs data and serves as the base for the ethical use of AI.

3. Digitization: While digital technologies have increased, digitization continues to below. Digitization will ensure the right amount of training data to run AI/ML algorithms by organizations.

• • Ensuring availability of clean dataset by investing in data management frameworks.

Conclusion: India will need better strategies around talent development, stronger policies for data usage and governance, and more investments in creating a technology infrastructure that can truly leverage AI.