Collective effort must to harness AI's potential while limiting user harms: Ashwini Vaishnaw

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a very big tool to solve many socio-economic problems but we need to contain the risks associated with AI and the solution has to come via a global thought process as it cannot be done in isolation by any country, Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Railways and I&B Ashwini Vaishnaw, said on Wednesday.

Addressing the 'Global IndiaAI Summit 2024' in the national capital in the presence of global leaders and experts from 50 countries, the minister said as we look at the potential of AI, we also need to collectively figure out a way what guardrails we need to place on the new technology so that it can be properly integrated with our social and democratic institutions.

“Over the last year, there has been a huge realisation about the dangers, the risks and the threats to our social institutions that AI can pose. In the recent general elections, we have seen how big a threat misinformation and fake news can be, and that threat gets multiplied manifold by the power of AI,” Minister Vaishnaw emphasised.

He said that this is not something which only India is experiencing but the entire world has witnessed the emergence of new risks based on AI.

“We need to work with the industry to make sure that those harms are contained,” said the minister.

Whether in India, Europe, Japan or in the US, “we are facing the same challenges, and the Global South is today looking for universal support, a universal thought process, at least some common basic principles on which the world has to respond to the potentials on the one hand and the challenges on the other,” the Union Minister explained.

Stressing that the thought process in India has been to democratise technology under the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the minister said technology should be accessible to all.

“The approach that PM Modi has always adopted is that technology should be accessible to everybody. The Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is a classic case where no single payment or service provider has a monopoly over the industry,” the minister told the gathering.

And this approach is consistent with the last 9-10 years of the 'Digital India' initiative.

“This is very much in line with what we are doing in the healthcare sector, the logistics sector and the financial services sector in the country,” said the minister.