Artificial intelligence, or AI, a term that a few decades ago circled around in the realms of sci-fi and fantasy, is a reality today. The most evolved AI of our fantasy tales is often sentient machines scheming to take over the world. We are not there yet, and perhaps reality is far more benign than our imagination.

AI, as we know today, has the potential to provide solutions to many of our real-life problems. In India, which is the world’s fastest growing major economy and has the second largest population in the world, AI can be transformational.

With the publication of a discussion paper on AI by the NITI Aayog recently, the government has not just signalled its priority to this disruptive technology, but also thrown it open to the public for ideas and suggestions.

One of the problems requiring urgent attention, where AI can demonstrably make an impact, is urban infrastructure, and here we have taken the first key steps with Smart Cities Mission. Our scorching pace of urbanisation means India is no longer a nation of villages. Every minute an estimated 30 people are moving out from their village, lock, stock and barrel, to become city dwellers. According to some studies, around 40% of the Indian population will be living in cities by 2030.

The question is: Do we even have the cities to accommodate this gigantic population? Experts say we will need at least 500 new cities to house our urban citizens or risk turning the existing ones into unmanageable slums.

Already, our metropolises that were planned at a time when resources were abundant and urban living was a luxury not necessity, are bursting at the seams with their hopelessly inadequate infrastructure and lack of planning. And while we have been extremely reluctant urbanisers, the late start has given us some significant advantages, one of which is the use of technology to leapfrog stages of development.

Across the world, cities are using technologies to become smarter, in the sense they are using it to manage key functions horizontally—city services, transport, communications, water, smart grids, public safety, education and health—all through a digitally-managed central command room. The government has embarked on an ambitious plan to turn 99 of our urban clusters into smart cities with an expected investment of `2.04 lakh crore. The strategic components of these smart cities include city improvement, renewal and extension, in addition to a pan-city initiative in which smart solutions are applied covering large parts of the city. Many have already begun implementing projects involving smart command and control centre, smart roads, solar rooftops, intelligent transport systems, smart parks, etc.

While these ‘brownfield’ cities are being retrofitted, we have ‘greenfield’ cities being built up from scratch under the Industrial Corridor programme. Creating a brand new smart city requires a comprehensive, long-range plan to direct the future growth and development of the entire area. For these greenfield cities, some of which are bigger in size than the country of Singapore, we don’t just have physical master plan, but, for the first time, it is dovetailed with a digital master plan to manage, operate and control all citywide utilities through one command and control centre.

The challenges of developing brownfield cities are different from greenfield cities, but common to both is the understanding that technology, especially emerging ones like AI and Internet of Things (IoT), will be the cornerstone of realising India’s aspirations of building the ‘intelligent’ cities of tomorrow. The basic premise of AI is the development of intelligent machines that are capable of high-level cognitive processes like thinking, perceiving, learning, problem-solving and decision-making. You provide the system with lots of data and get actionable intelligence in return; for example, in the way Netflix or YouTube gives you suggestions based on your browsing patterns.

Cities of today are sitting on goldmine of useful data, churning petabytes of it daily through video cameras, sensors, traffic management systems, smart meters, vehicles and mobile phones. AI has the potential to make sense of the humongous data and use the intelligence to increase performance of cities, optimise operational costs and resources, and enable sound citizen engagement.

For a smart city operation, the basic ICT functions include collection of data, say using sensors, CCTVs, smart energy meters and even social media engines, for real-time human activity. This would be relayed through communication systems like fibre optics, 3G/LTE, internet, Bluetooth. The data would then need to be analysed using AI and other tools, and the intelligence generated used to direct decisions and actions.

How can AI be potentially used in smart cities? The answer is, in countless ways. For instance, for management of traffic that has become the bane of many cities today—AI can understand real-time traffic, calculate permutations in a flash, process data at local level of traffic junctions, and even turn traffic lights off and on intelligently.

Public safety and security is enhanced by AI through sophisticated surveillance technologies, accident pattern monitoring, linking crime databases, combating gang violence and so on. AI can help with crowd management, estimation of size, predicting behaviour, tracking objects and enabling rapid response to incidents. It can be invaluable for managing utilities and optimal use of resources such as distributed energy and water. AI can lead to smarter homes with resources-saving applications and easing domestic workloads. It can greatly ease citizen services delivery, processing of files and applications, through chatbots for responding to enquiries with smart conversations. These bots can free up operational staff at help centres to address more complicated and time-sensitive queries.

An inevitable outcome of digitisation is cyber-attack and cyber-crime, targeting sensitive and personal data, which again AI can help manage to some extent by detecting vulnerabilities and taking remedial measures automatically. AI can similarly assist in numerous other city functions to improve public accessibility, including maintenance of outdoor spaces, lighting, parking management, learning, education, skill development and so on.

Technology can be a great enabler in achieving our primary goals of a smart city—protecting citizens and planning for the future; building a sustainable, resilient infrastructure that optimises resource use and ensures essential needs of all are met; and enhancing the quality of life of citizens, enabling individuals to improve their health and productivity.

But while we do have the advantages of access to a rapidly evolving technology ecosystem, there are other challenges we need to overcome. One of these is coordination between stakeholders—residents, administrators and operators. With AI, data sharing and a well-defined activity chain will be essential for efficiency. Large migrant populations in cities may skew data, so we will need to adjust a number of variables. For example, apart from actual ingress of people, increasing business activities, infrastructure expansion easing connectivity, community exchange must also be analysed.

A more technical issue with data-reliant decision-making is the accuracy of the data itself. We need to bring in a robust standardisation system for accurate data inputs. For example, in detecting wearers of safety helmets among bike riders without proper standards for helmets, AI will count as positive even those that are not approved by law. Also, ICT infrastructure requires uninterrupted network, power and regular maintenance. Difficulties remain with relation to costs, getting people with domain expertise and end-to-end solutions for this level of work.

The Smart City model has never been implemented on this scale in any part of the world. Many systems have been adopted and implemented in silos, but all the functions of the city have never been integrated right from scratch. It is an exciting new challenge for India; we could be creating new models for future cities and setting benchmarks for urban infrastructure.

The government has steered this mission in the right direction; the budget allocation for Digital India—the government’s umbrella initiative to promote AI, machine learning, 3D printing and other technologies—was almost doubled to `3,073 crore ($477 million) in 2018. Roping in the private sector, especially Indian companies that have a solid technological expertise, to shape the overall AI strategy would be a good move.

A standardised ICT infrastructure for seamless integration—state and countrywide—is essential. Start-up companies may be given access to data so they can create business models around use cases, helping both government and start-ups. What is important this time is we make a start somewhere. In many ways, public engagement is also critical for this mission since our talent, skills, creativity and ideas are largely invested with our people.

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While the term ‘Smart City’ is a commonly used one, the idea which the term refers to is one that lacks a universally accepted definition. A smart city is understood to be a municipality that leverages new technologies and networks to create a core infrastructure that helps coordinate and optimize systems.  The concept of smart cities overall promises a higher standard of life. The deployment of technologies like Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Robotics, and Big Data can help to create a city that constantly collects and runs on data and data-driven systems. It uses this data to constantly strive to resolve the problems that cities face today – congestion, lack of access to services, crime, and sustainable development, amongst others.

However, any data-driven network has to contemplate its vulnerability to external cyber-attacks, and the hacking of a smart city would be catastrophic. Where smart cities could use network cameras or IoT devices to identify crime and track criminals, collect traffic, data and images, hackers could take advantages on vulnerability and trigger massive cyber-attacks. Robots could be useful for working in sanitation, but hackers could create utter chaos with an army of automatons rising up from the sewers. At the most basic and fundamental level, a smart city will be collecting massive amounts of data about millions of human lives – data that could detail their movements, preferences, activities, and personal information. It would constitute a massive breach of privacy if it fell into the wrong hands.

The increasing amounts of information that a smartphone can collect about your life can induce paranoia, but there are solutions – switching the phone off, disconnecting it from the internet, installing the right software and taking the right precautions, for instance. When the basic infrastructure of the city around you is collecting your information, what can you do? What recourse is available at an individual level? Of course, this information is useful for authorities at a macro-level to design and construct efficient systems around you. That still means that every moment that you are in the city, there is some sensor or some system in your vicinity which at that very moment is collecting important information about you.

To ensure that the meaningful benefits that smart cities can bring to urban living are not lost to the fear of cyber attackers will require a robust and comprehensive cyber security system. A combination of hardware and software systems will ensure security of the main data repository, which individual systems – IoT sensors, CCTV cameras, and so forth – will have to be designed in a manner to prevent misuse and hacking. Users are also encouraged to set up strong password in personal IoT device and safeguard the button line together with device provider. EY called cyber security a ‘necessary pillar’ of smart cities in a recent report, and suggested end-to-end encryption, strong access controls, and an isolation of trusted resources from public resources.

Smart cities are a huge opportunity for Indians to access a brighter future with better transportation, waste management, energy management, and a comprehensively improved standard of living. However, smart city models should boost development while not compromising on data privacy and security. These cities will be built by a diverse ecosystem of providers, and care should be exercised to select the most secure cutting-edge technology products that shall be at the heart of India’s smart city program.

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Artificial Intelligence has become the nucleus of governance in India. With the Modi Government constantly making efforts to create an environment for digital growth and the rapid technological advancement that we are witnessing today particularly in the field of artificial intelligence has transformed the way of governance. The Prime Minister himself being a true believer in the potential that technology possesses and the power it has to uplift the economic conditions of the nation, has not left any stone unturned in embracing this transformation. The idea behind this disruptive innovation is not to outdo the human capabilities but to enhance the quality of life by making available simpler and effortless facilities.

Deep learning is one of the fastest growing spheres of artificial intelligencethat consists of a set of algorithms that analyses data through complex series of processes. We have already seen unimaginable inventions in this arena in the recent years, the most tangible ones being speech recognition functions, image recognition functions, and logical interpretation. Deep learning is all pervasive, with its application in sectors ranging from the automotive, healthcare, finance, legal, security and surveillance and even the Government.

India has made a quantum leap in the digital environment. With a competitive edge over other countries in terms of competent talent, a booming start-up environment, robust IT services and a supportive Government that is encouraging and channelizing the true potential of deep learning. With all of this and more India is at the spearhead of digitalization.

The Modi Government is working towards creating an AI platform that integrates data and technology to achieve desired outcomes. Their main area of focus is to accelerate innovation in the deep learning domain and develop an infrastructure framework that allows the capabilities of deep learning to be utilized to its fullest. The advancement and success stories of artificial intelligence across the globe have made the policy makers realize the need to step up their game and make artificial intelligence a critical element of their strategy building.

The Modi Government is persistently trying to increase the skilled employment level by training people particularly of the younger population through its Skill India campaign and aiding budding talent with its Startup India drive, at the same time attempting to divert global manufacturing to India via its Make in India program. They are also aiming at digital transformation nationwide through its Digital India initiative.

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