Cannot let AI models be brought into public domain without proper testing: Ashwini Vaishnaw

Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw spoke to Moneycontrol in an exclusive interview on March 9 in Bengaluru

It has been a hectic fortnight for Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who holds three crucial protfolios — railways, telecom, and electronic & IT.

The Government approved three semiconductor plant proposals,  greenlighted an AI mission with an outlay of Rs 10,472 crore and announced dates for spectrum auctions. Minister Vaishnaw also mediated between Google and some Indian apps amid a row over the former’s Play Store billing policies.

In a wide-ranging interview with Moneycontrol during his visit to Bengaluru, Vaishnaw spoke about why manufacturing will be cornerstone of the Modi Government’s third term and why allowing AI models without approvals will be detrimental to society.

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We will see demand for renewables, basically, the companies that want to renew their spectrum, and some demand for people who want to fill in some of the gaps they had in the spectrum. Some of the spectrum, which was lying tied up in the NCLT companies, has also expired. So that also becomes available. The more spectrum telecom service providers have, the better will be the quality of service.

We would like to support every fundraise programme that Vodafone Idea wants to take up. It's a listed company. I don't want to comment on its future or anything. What's important is that from the government's perspective, we have done everything possible.

The component ecosystem is now growing very rapidly in our country. Once the final product is there, everything else starts flowing in. In the coming two to three years, you'll see a significant improvement in the component ecosystem.

So, in the next term of Prime Minister Modi Ji's government, we'll be focusing on making manufacturing as a very, very comprehensive and a very large economy in India.

Yes, we are in discussion with players like NVIDIA. They have committed to supporting our AI mission in a very big way, very major way. We are working in parallel on two things. One, if you look at the entire structure, whether it is UPI, the AI mission, or the telecom stack, practically everywhere our Prime Minister's focus is on democratising technology. So, we are working in parallel on multiple things. In the AI mission, our focus is to create a common compute facility which is available both to the innovators, to the researchers, to students, people who want to build new models as well as people who want to get the inference out of the existing models.

With that, we hope that we will be able to create a very robust AI ecosystem and our focus will be on creating solutions which are relevant for our country. Our focus will be on healthcare, focus will be on agriculture, focus will be on weather forecasting, focus will be on logistics, focus will be on things which really make a big difference in our people's lives.

Two: We are also working on creating the educational layer. We want to create a course curriculum which is tailored for the digital world.

We'll tailor the course curriculum and support the BTech, MTech and PhDs in cutting edge AI technologies. Gone are those days, 30, 40 years back when something used to happen in the developed world, right? And India would catch up after many years. In today's Modiji's vision, very clearly, we should be at par with the world, and we should innovate, and the world should then look at us as the leader.

We have seen some of the large social media intermediaries and platforms which have rolled out AI systems without testing them, correct? And the impact of such AI systems without testing them if they roll out, the impact on our democracy is huge. We have responsibility towards our society.

We cannot let such AI models be brought into public domain without proper testing. That was the purpose. The purpose is not to prevent the startups from innovating. I think I've clarified on record, and this is something which is clear in our mind.

Ultimately, the startup ecosystem and the people who have created so much value in our society, in our economy, in our people's lives, creating such innovative solutions, they must be protected. They have to be supported. So, I'm glad that Google has agreed on our request. And both the sides are now meeting regularly.

We created a forum in which both the startups and Google can interact and come up with suggestions. I was told that they'll require about seven, eight weeks to come up with a common solution. Once they arrive at a common solution, we'll have a discussion jointly and then come up with the next steps.

Our semiconductor programme is for 20 years. It's not just for two years or three years. Our Prime Minister has very clearly mandated us to prepare a roadmap for 20 years. The first successes that we have had have practically changed the world view about India.

Now, on the design ecosystem, we need to put significant focus on the second version of Semicon. The second version of Semicon will basically focus on getting at least 10 chipsets, which are full products, which are full solutions and taking those solutions and taking them down the value chain of manufacturing.

More funds will be required because a long-term programme like this will need it. And we will also work with the semiconductor industry participants to see (based on our current experience) what else we need to do to significantly improve the ecosystem.