HOW INDIA CAN BE AT THE FOREFRONT OF AI

BY FOSTERING PUBLIC-PRIVATE COLLABORATION AND GOVERNMENT INVESTMENT IN AI USE CASES, INDIA CAN TAKE THE LEAD IN THE GLOBAL AI LANDSCAPE. BUT IT MUST ALSO PRIORITISE ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

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In 2011, when Marc Andreessen wrote, “Software is eating the world”, he was referring to the increasing ‘tech-ification’ of businesses. Since then, companies big and small have been rebranding themselves as ‘tech companies’. In 2018, the CEO of the beauty firm L’Oreal, Jean-Paul Agon, told investors about his company’s transformation to a beauty-tech company. Sundar Pichai declared Google as an ‘AI-first’ company in 2016.

Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, AI has entered the mass adoption stage in its evolution. While AI models have been improving our lives for several years now (think of how YouTube helps you discover content, or your reliance on Google Maps for directions), with ChatGPT and other generative AI tools, the magic of AI has become more immediate and accessible for a wide range of everyday activities. This new breed of AI is game-changing in three ways.

First, for the first time in history, we have a technology that aims to understand us. With every new technology, we humans were expected to learn it so we could use it better. The new AI, however, seeks to understand us. This is a game-changer and a huge equaliser. No prior understanding of the technology is necessary to get started.

Second, this AI is super-responsive to our needs and is designed to please humans. Techniques such as reinforcement learning from human feedback have ensured that these AI systems produce answers that satisfy human beings. And when you provide feedback, these systems seem to learn quickly, in the space of a conversation, to provide more relevant, better answers.