THE POTENTIAL LIES IN NICHE MODELS

GIVEN THE GAP IN INDIGENOUS DEVELOPMENT OF AI TECHNOLOGIES AND THE HUGE R&D INVESTMENTS INVOLVED, INDIA’S PATH TO GLOBAL LEADERSHIP WILL NEED A CREATIVE CONVERGENCE OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES AND PUBLIC-PRIVATE COLLABORATION

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The promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and concerns over its misuse have dominated the public debate with Prime Minister Narendra Modi weighing in on the issue in recent weeks. Few perhaps are aware that his monthly radio programme, Mann ki Baat—which is broadcast in over 40 languages—has inspired research in AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP). This digital archive of audio, video, and transcripts resulted in an interest­ ing collaboration between researchers of the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH) and IIT Kanpur. They used Mann ki Baat as a multilingual test set in Indian languages to establish a baseline for translation of Indian languages, leveraging neural machine translation (NMT) technology a few years ago much before the current hype over ChatGPT and generative AI took the world by storm. These early efforts in availing publicly available repositories of multimedia content in multiple Indian languages have been at the heart of recent advances in AI in India that have made the headlines.

A few weeks back at a Diwali inter­ action with mediapersons at the BJP party office, PM Modi had, for the first time, spoken on the perils and risks of AI­generated deepfakes. In fact, he had elaborated on how he himself had be­ come a victim of one such AI­generated fake video. Between the caution over deepfakes and the promise of breach­ ing the language barriers, the prime minister’s reference underscored how the debate over AI in India has shifted from the technology corridors to the mainstream of Indian politics.