India’s AI Regulations Won’t Deter Innovation: MeitY Secretary

The Centre plans to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) in a way that it does not deter innovation in the space, said S Krishnan, secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

Speaking at the Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII’s) Annual Business Summit 2024, Krishnan said the government would adopt the approach it took while framing the Digital Personal Data Protection Act for preparing the regulations for AI, Indian Express reported.

“Like we did with the DPDP Act, we will ensure that both the interests of innovation and protection of vital interests will come in the future,” he was quoted as saying.

Krishnan also said that India might hold an advantage over other nations by entering AI regulations later, as it can study and learn from the mistakes made by other countries. 

The MeitY secretary also expressed concern about AI’s impact on job losses. However, he said that the impact in India could be limited because of the large pool of engineers with exposure to the technology. But he also said that significant retraining and upskilling efforts would be necessary to safeguard India’s workforce from potential job losses.

The statements come at a time when the usage of AI, especially generative AI (GenAI), is increasing rapidly across the globe. While AI is expected to solve problems across countries and sectors, there are also concerns about its misuse.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said there are chances of misuse of AI without proper training. Prior to that, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for MeitY, said that the draft regulatory framework for AI would be released by July this year.

The Centre also issued an advisory earlier this year, asking digital platforms to get government’s approval before launching “under-tested” or “unreliable” AI models. However, the advisory was withdrawn following criticism from the industry.

Amid all these, AI adoption is on the rise in the country and a number of AI startups have emerged over the past few years.

In March, the Union Cabinet also approved INR 10,372 Cr India AI Mission to boost innovations in the sector. Under the initiative, the government aims to procure AI compute capacity and provide it at a subsidised rate to startups and researchers. 

Speaking at the event, Krishnan said that the capacity would be established through partnerships with private companies. The government plans to make this capacity available through viable gap funding or a voucher-based mechanism.