The Rise of the AI economy

The Hindu     9th December 2020     Save    

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.
  1. 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.