AI should not be demonised, be regulated out of existence: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar on November 3 said that regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) and ensuring safety for users cannot come at the expense of the growth of research, startups and innovation ecosystem associated with the technology.

Chandrasekhar, who was speaking to media persons after returning from the United Kingdom where he took part in the AI Safety Summit, and where he held multiple meetings with his counterparts from various countries, said: "(During the summit) we kept reiterating that for us safety is an important issue, but our goal is to grow AI and making sure that ecosystem for AI, research, startups and innovation, is as important for us as safety of AI. It is not a binary choice that we do safety at the expense of the risk of growth of the digital economy."

"AI remains for India, as for the world a very good opportunity. It should not be demonised.. be regulated out of existence," he said.

Chandrasekhar, during these meetings also called for the establishment of an institutional framework between countries for regulating AI and a consensus on the dos and don'ts of AI among nations.

The minister said that in the upcoming Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) Summit scheduled to be held in New Delhi in December, India along with various countries, will deliberate on this proposed global framework on AI.

After the deliberation, Chandrasekhar expects that the framework to be in place in the next six or seven months, which is when the South Korean edition of the AI Safety Summit is expected to be held.

Chandrasekhar also said that during the GPAI meeting, nations will discuss on the four harms of AI: disruption to existing workforce; impact on privacy; "non-criminal harms" such as AI bias and weaponisation and criminalisation of AI.

This also comes at a time when India is preparing the Digital India Bill (DIB), the successor to the over 20 years old Information Techonology Act.

Moneycontrol has written how the DIB can bring in guardrails against AI algorithms, including empowering citizens to opt out from being subjected to an algorithm's decisions, albeit with riders.