Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw Inaugurates Global IndiaAI Summit, Outlines India's AI Strategy

The Global IndiaAI Summit 2024 was inaugurated on Wednesday at Bharatmandapam by Union Minister for Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw. The event saw the presence of several notable figures, including Minister of State Jitin Prasada, Secretary at the Ministry S Krishnan, Additional Secretary Abhishek Singh, Srinivas Narayanan, Vice President at OpenAI, Debjani Ghosh, President of NASSCOM, and Hiroshi Yoshida, Japan’s Vice-Minister for Policy Coordination in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

The summit, an esteemed gathering of international delegates, AI experts, and policymakers, is set to establish the foundational principles for AI regulation in India. Vaishnaw emphasised that India’s approach to Artificial Intelligence will mirror its successful Digital Public Infrastructure model.

“The digital public infrastructure is a classic case where no single payment provider, no single service provider has monopoly over the service. The government invests in the platform and everybody becomes a part of that and the same approach we are going to adopt in AI also,” Vaishnaw stated.

He elaborated that the government will invest in creating a public platform where compute power, high-quality data sets, common protocols, and a unified technical and legal framework will be accessible. This will enable startups, entrepreneurs, academicians, and various sectors to accelerate their AI initiatives using this shared infrastructure.

“We will be investing in an AI compute infrastructure of 10,000 or more GPUs. And again, it will be an approach of public-private partnership, so that the efficiencies of industry can be harnessed for this bigger cause. We’ll be creating AI innovation centers,” Vaishnaw said.

The minister also highlighted the importance of high-quality data sets and application development initiatives focused on addressing social and economic challenges. He underscored the government’s commitment to skill development, referencing existing collaborations with universities for specialised courses.

“We have set up a course curriculum in about 104 universities for semiconductors, for 5G and 6G development. We have tied up with universities for railway and logistics sector. Similar approach will be there in case of AI also,” Vaishnaw added.

The summit will also address AI regulation and risk management, with Vaishnaw noting significant international efforts in this area. “Today we are holding a seminar, a conference where the experience of the last one will be discussed. In many countries, lots of activity related to containing the risks related to AI has happened,” he said.

He mentioned the recent regulatory actions in the EU, the US, and the establishment of a separate AI body by the UN. The minister revealed that the summit will focus on both risk management and the societal benefits of AI.

“The ministry is working on the foundations, the groundwork for setting up the India AI mission. All the seven pillars on which the mission was approved are being worked upon. In the coming few months, we will be launching the mission so that the power and potential of AI can be harnessed in agriculture, education, healthcare, medicine, and pharmaceuticals, in all the sectors that are relevant for our society,” Vaishnaw concluded.