India To Regulate AI To Keep Digital Citizens Safe: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

The Indian government will regulate artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure it does not harm “digital citizens”, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Friday (June 9).

The statement came at a time when AI has taken the world by storm, especially with the emergence of generative AI products such as ChatGPT, leading to calls for regulating the technology.

Addressing a press conference on achievements of the Centre’s ‘Digital India’ campaign in the last nine years, Chandrasekhar said, “We will regulate AI as we will regulate Web3 or any emerging technologies to ensure that these technologies don’t harm digital nagriks.”

The rise of AI has also led to debates and discussions on its impact on jobs globally. Speaking on this, the minister said AI becoming intelligent enough to replace jobs is a remote possibility, at least in the next five to ten years.

Currently, AI is more task-oriented and it creates efficiency. Most of the jobs require logic and reasoning, which AI does not offer yet, he noted. However, he did not reject the possibility of AI being able to achieve capability in logic and reasoning going forward.

The comments came a day after Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, which is behind the generative AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Talking about his meeting with the PM, Altman said they discussed the opportunities which AI presents for India and the need to think about global regulations for the technology.

“He (PM Modi) was so enthusiastic, really thoughtful about AI and the benefits of it. We asked why India has embraced ChatGPT so much and so early. It’s really been fun for us to watch. He had great answers about that,” Altman said.

On Wednesday, Altman called AI an existential risk and asked global leaders to come together to regulate the burgeoning space. However, he said that the regulations should apply only to major players in the ecosystem, such as Google and OpenAI, and smaller companies should not fall under its ambit.

Responding to a question by Inc42, Altman also said that he had discussions with Indian founders and would “love” to invest in the startups in the country.

Amid increasing adoption in India, OpenAI last month expanded the availability of ChatGPT for Indian iOS users, along with over 30 other countries.

It is pertinent to note that MoS Chandrasekhar recently also said that the Centre had started internal consultations on principles and guardrails for the use of AI in language learning models.