India paves the way for the world in Artificial Intelligence
A NASSCOM analysis projects that AI would increase India’s GDP by 450–500 billion dollars by 2025, or 10% of the goal GDP of USD 5 trillion. The adoption of AI has been pioneered by highly digitised sectors like IT, financial services, telecommunications and media, and retail.
Depending on the sector, AI adoption varies in terms of pace and scope. Early adoption can help businesses in industries with limited adoption of AI, such as healthcare and pharmaceuticals, energy and natural resources, and manufacturing, create economic moats.
India has had the largest increase in the usage of artificial intelligence (AI) during the Covid-19 era, according to a global report by PwC India. The report also revealed that 94% of the more than 200 Indian chief executives polled stated they have already implemented AI in their businesses or plan to do so.
According to the survey, India had the most increase in the use of AI when compared to other developed nations like Britain, Japan, and the US, with over 70% of Indian organisations implementing AI in certain functional areas by 2020, up from about 62 per cent in 2019.
The world’s fifth-largest economy, India, has already surpassed the United Kingdom, and there are strong indications that this trend will continue. In the fight for global AI supremacy, the US and UK have also fallen behind, with India taking the top spot at a time when geopolitical instability is growing in the West.
The road ahead
The prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, has several key programmes that are anticipated to all be directly impacted by recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) within the next several years. India must prioritise AI as a key component of its national security strategy given China’s significant advancements in AI-based research. India must therefore promote AI-based innovation and build infrastructure that is AI-ready in order to secure its strategic interests and prepare its labour and skills markets for an AI-based future.
- India must establish a deliberate policy to promote AI invention, adaption, and spread in industries other than consumer goods and information technology services if it hopes to reap the most benefits from the AI revolution.
- By providing incentives to manufacturers, establishing regional innovation clusters for manufacturing automation and robotics in collaboration with universities and start-ups, incorporating market-based mechanisms for identifying the types of skills that employers will value in the future, and encouraging the development of cloud infrastructure capacity, policymakers should make AI a crucial part of the prime minister’s flagship Make in India, Skill India, and Digital India programmes.
- The National Education Policy must offer innovative suggestions for new educational models that would be more appropriate for a future economy powered by AI.
- The government should target public sector applications where recent advancements in AI could have a substantial impact, such as detecting tax evasion, avoiding subsidy leakage, and identifying beneficiaries
- India must prioritise machine intelligence in its national security plan and assess various defence research models in conjunction with the commercial sector and academic institutions.
Challenges faced by India for AI’s development
- Up until now, consumer goods have been the main focus of AI-based applications, which have been predominantly driven by the private sector. Government policymakers must pay attention because of the technology’s expanding scope and repercussions.
- India should take into account the public and commercial funding strategies for AI research that have been proven successful in the United States, China, South Korea, and other countries.
- The sequential structure of education and employment is no longer relevant in the current economic climate since jobs are changing quickly and skills are becoming less and less valued over the course of a few years.
Conclusion
Today’s AI-based technologies have already had an impact on people’s lives in ways that are frequently difficult to comprehend or completely recognise. Up until now, the private sector has been mostly responsible for this stealthy spread of AI technology, which has mainly been used for consumer items. But technology has a lot of potentials and is crucial.
We sincerely hope that India will be able to fully utilise artificial intelligence, both for the benefit of its people and to maintain the strength of its economy. The speed and direction of AI adoption in the nation will be determined during the next five years.
