Will regulate AI and ensure it doesn’t harm digital citizens: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Friday said that the government will regulate Artificial Intelligence technology in order to ensure that it doesn’t harm ‘digital citizens’. “Our approach towards AI regulation is very simple. We will regulate AI as we regulate Web 3 or any emerging technologies to ensure they do not harm digital citizens,” Union Minister of State for Entrepreneurship, Skill Development, Electronics and Technology said at a press conference to highlight the digital initiatives taken by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government so far.

“We will safeguard digital citizens through this technology,” he said, adding companies willing to operate in India have to mitigate user harm in the first place. He also touched upon the concerns about potential job loss from those disruptive and said that AI in its current form is no threat to jobs.

According to him, AI as a technology in its current form is largely task-oriented and not capable of dealing with a situation where logic and reasoning are needed. “While AI is disruptive we do not see in the next few years the so-called threat of replacing the jobs. Because the current stage of the development of AI is very task-oriented and not reasoning, logic and etc.”

“Jobs usually have reasoning and logic and AI is not as sophisticated at this point,” the minister said. Given India’s strong IT industry and a large set of data, AI-based utilities can leverage huge potential in the country. Though AI is still in its early stages.

Many countries have been using AI technologies for better service delivery and to reduce human intervention but fears of job cuts remain as the technology evolves. On Thursday, OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman, whose company deals with artificial intelligence technologies and has created ChatGPT, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi here in the national capital and discussed various aspects of AI including the need for global regulation.

In a tweet, after meeting Altman, PM Modi wrote that the potential of AI in India’s tech ecosystem is vast — among the youth in particular. Meanwhile, Chandrasekhar expressed his gratitude to PM Modi for India’s development on the digital front, and the onset of advancements like the fastest internet services, and 5G.

“In the last 9 years, thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visionary leadership, the country has transformed. The digital economy and the technology sector have transformed under his leadership, under his vision,” he said. He spoke about the country’s transformation since “the bad days of United Progressive Alliance (UPA’s) led by Congress lost decade when people were running away from the country, there were scams every day and nobody was making any investment.”

He emphasised that India has made huge advancements since then, referring to it as “receiving the highest FDI” and “creating more jobs than ever before.” He said India is now a sector that the rest of the world wants to partner with. “The world wants to partner with Indian entrepreneurship and Indian entrepreneurs to build the technologies of the future,” said the minister.

He lauded PM Modi for these achievements and advancements saying, “I think the people will certainly agree that PM Narendra Modi Ji needs to be thanked for 9 years of tremendously hardworking seva that he has done for our country and our youth.”PTI