Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to disrupt our world. With intelligent machines enabling high-level cognitive processes like thinking, perceiving, learning, problem-solving, and decision making, coupled with advances in data collection and aggregation, analytics, and computer processing power, AI presents opportunities to complement and supplement human intelligence and enrich the way people live and work.

AI is set to have a significant transformational impact on the industry as well as academia. The Indian Government is playing a key role in sustaining the intervention in order to tackle the challenges that AI-specific startups face in order to grow in their verticals. During the 2018-2019 budget, the Government of India has mandated NITI Aayog to establish the National Program on AI. According to the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, the underlying thrust is to identify the specific applications of emerging technologies with maximum social impact.

It is quite interesting that India ranks third in the world in terms of research publications related to AI and the India Government has initiated a number of startup schemes related to emerging technologies. AI is set to have a significant transformational impact on the industry as well as academia in the country.

India, being the fastest growing economy with the second largest population in the world, has a significant stake in the AI revolution. Recognizing AI’s potential to transform economies and the need for India to strategize its approach, Hon’ble Finance Minister, in his budget speech for 2018 – 2019, mandated NITI Aayog to establish the National Program on AI, with a view to guiding the research and development in new and emerging technologies. In pursuance of the above, NITI Aayog has 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. Since the start of this year, NITI Aayog has partnered with several leading AI technology players to implement AI projects in critical areas such as agriculture and health. Learnings from these projects, under various stages of implementation, as well as our engagement with some of the leading institutions and experts have given a better perspective to our task of crafting the national strategy for AI.

However, we are still miles away from unlocking the true value of the huge repository of data collected from different sources using AI and ML techniques, in both the government and the private sector.

There are two broad requirements for diffusion: policy push for spread of AI adoption, and trust of consumers or users, which is the ‘policy pull’. The policy push has been inadequate. The other key ingredient of diffusion is to gain the trust of consumers and citizens by protecting their privacy and data, which is again missing due to the absence of privacy law in India.

First, there has to be increased long-term investment in Artificial Intelligence in both the public and private sectors. India lags behind the top five geographies for private sector investment in AI. The US is far ahead, with investments worth $18 billion, followed by Europe ($2.6 billion) and Israel ($1.8 billion). According to one estimate, China accounted for a greater share of global private-sector funding than the US.

Large companies can afford to invest in R&D but only a few are venturing into it; they are either scared, being risk-averse, or are slow. The start-ups don’t have the money to invest in developing AI and are facing capacity issues. Accordingly, they prefer using existing models rather than develop new ones.

Second: the scope of using AI and blockchain to unlock efficiencies of organizations and systems is maximum in our public sector and government departments. To boost AI infrastructure in India, there is an urgent need for government departments both at the Central and the state levels to adopt AI-based solutions to solve the legacy and intractable problems being faced by them – from increasing agricultural productivity to climate change, from air pollution to disaster management. This will have a multiplier effect that could spur the private sector to jump in.

Third: the government and the private sector must work hand-in-hand, particularly on the R&D aspects of Artificial Intelligence. Public-private partnership models bringing together the expertise of research institutions and universities (including the institutions of eminence), market knowledge along with financial skin-in-the-game by the corporations, and partial financial grants by the government will inspire confidence to innovate using AI. The involvement of the private sector could ensure the research output is market-competitive.

Fourth: promoting STEM courses in early education, revisiting the course-curriculum in colleges and on-boarding industry experts to teach final year students were some of the key recommendations by a tech policy think-tank, The Dialogue, sometime back. Indian higher education programmes also need to be tweaked to include training on AI that cuts across disciplines. The vast network of hugely successful and talented Indian-origin professionals heading large multi-national corporations abroad must be utilized to institutionalize knowledge-sharing, mentoring, and collaborative R&D initiatives.

Fifth: a fundamental challenge with regards to the development of AI in India is the quality of connectivity in the country. India needs to work towards improving its infrastructure and thereby allow for an environment that supports the growth of new technology.

Last: because Artificial Intelligence is so powerful as it has all the information about a consumer to potentially be able to manipulate their behavior, choices, and preferences, India immediately requires a data protection law to ensure individual privacy.

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New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government is working to turn around the way it handles and maintains important data related to its schemes and citizens — it is conducting an extensive review on the current state of data preparedness of all ministries.

Top government sources told ThePrint that the Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office of the NITI Aayog and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) have started the exercise to assess the preparedness of data systems.

Based on the results of the exercise, which would include a detailed online survey, a Data Governance Quality Index scorecard will be prepared and the ministries will be ranked.

The move comes following a missive from Bhaskar Khulbe, retired IAS officer and adviser to PM Modi. A recent communication from the NITI Aayog to the ministries stated they should complete the survey by 25 May, after which the information shared by them will be shared with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

What will the exercise entail?

All ministries in the Modi government will have to conduct self-diagnosis on the use of information technology for monitoring various data. For this, they have to take an online survey.

The survey will seek to gather extensive details on the process of generation and collation of data on the government’s programmes or schemes. This includes focus on at what level the data is generated (national, state, district, panchayat, village, individual), and if it is digitised at the same level.

It will also seek to know from the ministries if the data is generated in real-time, or monthly, fortnightly, weekly, daily or quarterly.

The ministries will have to explicitly state if they use mobile surveys, geo-coded photos, geo-fenced information or location tracking devices to generate data.

Additionally, the survey will seek to know if ministries check data quality parameters like: proper profiling; control of incoming data; data pipeline design to avoid duplicate data; accurate gathering of data requirements; enforcement of data integrity; use of metadata; and availability of capable data quality control teams.

It will also look to know if the ministries use mobile phones for monitoring, outreach, feedback, collection of data remotely, phone-based survey, geo-tagged photo uploads, geo-fenced data generation, location and GPS data, and multimedia data.

Data analyses by ministries, and the methods used for that — ranging from exploratory data analysis, modeling and algorithms, correlation, causation, progression analysis, predictive or data mining — will also be considered.

Information on if the schemes have dashboards and the purposes for which they are used, such as visual representation of performance measures, will also be sought, among other measures. It will also assess if the ministries use IT for communication — website information, website dashboard, mobile app, social media.

The linkage of the ministries’ Management Information System with Public Financial Management System, Aadhaar, mobile numbers and bank accounts will also be seen.

Additionally, the assessment will check if the ministries use other data resources such as remote sensing data, night light data, social media, private sector generated data, and applies machine learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain and big data analytics.

‘Will curb data discrepancies’

Senior officials in the Modi government said the exercise will be an important step in the government’s management of crucial data using information technology — especially of data pertaining to schemes that are centrally sponsored.

“This would go a long way in monitoring the outputs and the outcomes of the schemes and ensuring that the data is organised. Specific and real-time data is the need of the hour for effective monitoring of their implementation as the central government periodically releases funds for them,” a top civil servant told ThePrint on condition of anonymity.

A second senior government official said the exercise will be important as several flagship schemes of the government are managed by more than one ministry.

“There have been multiple instances where discrepancies have been observed when the data collated by one ministry does not match the data collated by another, on the same scheme,” said the official, who didn’t wish to be named.

“Real-time and detailed data collation and their maintenance will help solve such discrepancies, ensure authenticity of the data and would be of crucial value to the government in making policy decisions,” the official said.

“Presently, there is data available in a manner that does not lead to a complete picture when collated,” the official said. “Moreover, there is no cross department sharing of data, even if it is the same scheme, leading to gaps and confusion. There is no integration of data, whereas data flow should be seamless inter or intra department.”

ThePrint had first reported that the government has begun an extensive exercise to record all Covid-19 response data, and hired a private firm for the job.

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NEW DELHI: There is a huge scope for India to improve medical treatment by taking advantage of technical developments such as AI and data analytics, former Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya said on Monday.

“With AI (artificial intelligence), data analytics and all the technology there, treatments can perhaps be done better (in India) as we go forward,” Panagariya, Professor of Indian Political Economy at the Columbia University, said at US-India Strategic Partnership Forum here .

By taking advantage of the technological changes such as AI and data analytics, India can bring good treatments almost anywhere in the country, he added.

On the pricing issue in the medical industry, he said clearly this is being recognised in the trade agreements as well, citing that in some visible cases, prices have been negotiated between the companies (exporting and importing).

Panagariya said India’s health sector is still very much evolving and very informal as it is still largely dominated by the private sector and government’s role largely had been into setting up medical colleges.

“The way India started was that largely this was driven by the private sector. Government’s role was largely in setting up medical colleges and treatments etc generally, there were some hospitals, but were largely driven by private sector. In the rural areas, the government did  set-up the whole infrastructure.

“The biggest problem that India had was that in the rural areas and even in tier 2-3 cities, the qualified doctors just don’t go..and much of the provision is done my people who have just kind of learnt the job or somebody who have worked as an assistant with a doctor,” he said.

These are the challenges that India will have to beat, he said, adding the sector will see changes as the reforms have been introduced through The Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Act, 2019.

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Two consecutive budgets read by two Finance Ministers (Arun Jaitley and Piyush Goyal) had provisions for a National Artificial Intelligence Portal. But, almost two years have passed since AI (artificial intelligence) was given prominence.

It looks like the project it stuck in red tape.

Both the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Niti Aayog are now staking claim to the project, leading to a complete standstill.

Presenting his 2018-2019 budget speech Arun Jaitley had mandated the Niti Aayog to establish the national programme on AI to guide research and development in new and emerging technologies.

Almost a year later, presenting the Interim Budget 2019-20 in the Lok Sabha, interim Finance Minister Piyush Goyal had spoken about nine priority areas that have been identified for the development of the AI sector in the country.

Even Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman in her maiden speech had said that the government will be increasing its efforts to improve the skills of youth in fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data, robotics, and other newer skills.

Provisions for AI are galore but the project is stuck in a limbo because both Niti Aayog and MeitY are wanting to take the project forward. Sources within the IT Ministry have told India Today that a budget of 300 crores has been sent to the department of expenditure under that Finance Ministry.

Interestingly, even Niti Aayog (government’s think tank) has submitted an expenditure report of approximately Rs 7,000 crore to the department of expenditure.

The department of expenditure is now contemplating the next course of action with regards to the varied budgets it has received.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been vocal about his desire to expand India’s reach in artificial intelligence sphere.

On one hand the project is stuck because both MeitY and Niti Aayog are staking a claim on it and on the other hand the government is making tall claims on back of the subject.

Responding to supplementaries during Question Hour, Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank said that engineering students are being trained so that they can be a part of the ‘Make in India’ initiative of the government.

The minister highlighted that the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) will not allow new conventional disciplines with low employment potential from the academic year 2020-21 and will permit only emerging fields like artificial intelligence and blockchain.

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