AI in India should be interoperable, frugal, competitive: RS Sharma

“Whatever way we develop these AI-based systems, we must ensure that these systems actually cater to the bottom of the pyramid. These systems have the property of interoperability, frugality, and open standards because people [otherwise] develop their own closed standards,” RS Sharma, Non-Executive Chairman of the Open Networks for Digital Commerce (ONDC), said at a closed-door conference last week. MediaNama is publishing his remarks with his permission.

Sharma is a key figure in India’s digital transformation, given his involvement in Aadhaar (as CEO UIDAI), the National Health Authority (as its Chairman), and Net Neutrality (as the Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India). 

Key excerpts from his speech last week:

On understanding AI and its transformative potential

Sharma said that he has been taking online courses on machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, to better understand the technology, because that can help him get ideas about how the technology can be applied. “The paradigm on programming has been overturned”, he said, and computers are programming themselves from the data, by understanding patterns and the way forward.  “I have a feeling, an intuitive feeling, that AI can really transform the entire way we work… But most importantly, I feel that if AI can transform the bottom of the pyramid, that will be a real application for us.”

Principles for Developing AI in India

AI development in India “has to be at scale, because we are 1.4 billion. It has to be at speed, because we can’t take so many years to develop. It has to be democratic because we should not create monopolies. It has to be interoperable because multiple platforms will exist and they must talk to each other. It has to be frugal, which means that everyone should be able to use it… It has to be convenient, cost-effective and [inspire] confidence… people should be able to use it with confidence. It has to reduce the transaction cost.”

Giving the example of Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a payments system run by a private company called the National Payments Corporation of India but supported by the Indian government, he said, “If UPI, for example, was not costing literally 1% [of total transaction cost], we could not have had this kind of development. Today, I think we have done about 15 billion transactions in one month on UPIs.” 

It cannot be a monopoly

“It cannot be a monopoly of the few,” Sharma added, saying that it cannot be so “platform centric” and have “monopolistic tendency, such that only a few players in the world can have advantage of that and the rest of us are kind of becoming clients of that particular platform. That should not happen. And that I think is one of the major important things.”

“Whatever way we develop these AI-based systems,” he continued, “we must ensure that these systems actually cater to the bottom of the pyramid. These systems have the property of interoperability, frugality, open standards… because people develop their closed standards.”

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AI for India’s specific needs

In his concluding remarks, Sharma said, “I think most important question is how AI can be used for our country, for our applications, for our needs. That I think is the most relevant part of the discussion today. Hopefully, you will see that happening.”

From the Past: RS Sharma on Regulating AI

While Sharma didn’t go into details on how AI should be regulated, apart from saying that we have to figure out how that has to be done, he has, in the past spoken about the issue, though his views may have changed now.

In 2020, speaking at the Indian government’s Raise 2020 Summit (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment, 2020), he said that India must have a legal framework dealing with the full range of issues around AI, including algorithmic bias, data mining, using data without the permission of the data owner, and broad principles for the same must be set out “a priori.” He had wanted regulations should largely be “reactive,” and had warned against “anticipatory regulation” which might prevent innovation. Much more, including his views on transnational large corporations, can be found here.

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