Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday underlined that India has adopted a techno-legal approach to AI safety, stressing that the government’s tilt is more toward innovation than strict regulation.
Innovation Over Regulation
Speaking at the launch of two initiatives, AI for Viksit Bharat Roadmap: Opportunity for Accelerated Economic Growth and NITI Frontier Tech Repository under its Frontier Tech Hub -Vaishnaw emphasized India’s unique stance.
“We have taken a very different approach in AI safety, whereas many parts of the world look at AI safety more as a legal challenge. They want to create a law, pass a law, and then believe that AI safety will come. We have taken a techno-legal approach, and our AI Safety Institute is a virtual institute, which basically is a network of institutes. Each of these nodes in the network has taken one problem to solve for,” he said.
The Minister added that India’s policy tilt is more toward innovation than regulation. “When there is a trade-off between regulation and innovation, we tend to tilt more towards innovation. That’s very different from Europe and many other parts of the world, where the tilt is more towards regulation. Tilt is more towards passing a law. Tilt is more towards creating a regulatory body. We believe that technology will innovate, people will use it, and we will evolve into getting the right regulatory structure rather than prescribing it through a law,” Vaishnaw explained.
Benefits for People Across India
Vaishnaw noted that this approach has already shown results. “The approach has helped so far. The approach will keep helping India, and especially the people living in far-flung areas of the country, which need new technological solutions for fulfilling aspirations of people,” he remarked.
AI as a Transformative Force
Highlighting the transformative role of artificial intelligence, Vaishnaw said, “Growth is inclusive and robust, driven by technology, and technology is the fundamental base of this growth. Over a period of the last few decades, the biggest change which has happened, and the biggest factor which has joined this constellation of technologies, is AI, because AI is now affecting practically everything that we do.”
Drawing a comparison, he added, “Like the internet, which changed everything that we did, AI is also going to fundamentally change the way we work, the way we live, the way we consume, the way we teach our children, the way we do healthcare. Practically everything is going to be impacted.”
Strengthening R&D and AI Infrastructure
The Minister stressed the need for strong R&D and talent development. “It’s very important to make sure that India is a frontrunner in AI technology or in the use of AI development of AI. The core of this part will be R&D on one hand, and getting a very, very strong and deep talent pipeline on the other,” he said.
He also highlighted India’s growing compute strength. “With regard to Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), against the target of 10,000, India has 38,000 GPUs available for everybody,” Vaishnaw informed.
