New Delhi| Artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies will play a key role in achieving the Central government’s vision of making the digital economy reach US$ 1 trillion of GDP by 2025, said Dr Rajendra Kumar, Additional Secretary, Union Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY).

“We have the vision to take the digital part of the economy from currently 7-8 per cent of GDP to over 20 per cent in the next five years. This is a massive task before us to sensitize all stakeholders, all ministries and to bring them on-board with this vision of massive transformation, led by digital technologies.”

Dr Kumar added that AI and other emerging technologies will play a key role and without this infusion, we cannot move to raise this contribution to that level in the next five years. For this, the involvement of all stakeholders is needed, he said.  

He further stated that the government has recently undertaken the National Digital Public platform initiative involving various ministries. “Over 10 key ministries are part of this initiative to ensure all their diverse applications and schemes are integrated over one common platform. This will help in providing a seamless interface to citizens and businesses for various services,” Dr Kumar emphasized. 

Kumar, who was addressing ‘A(I)ndia Conclave 2020 – Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Future Excellence’ organized by FICCI jointly with MeitY, said that many countries have come out with their statutory laws to deal with them. The Government of India has also launched massive efforts to bring all stakeholders together to ensure that we bring a common legal framework on this.

“The personal data protection bill is now in Parliament for further approval. Once this becomes an act, it would make India a leading country to have a cutting-edge framework in terms of data protection,” he said.

Dr Kumar also said that the government is also working on the Non-Personal Data front and brought out the framework for public consultation. “We have received good feedback on this, and once the frameworks are in place, it would make India a leading country in the world with the latest data protection legislation,” he assured.

These legal provisions aim to ensure that data is handled responsibly by stakeholders and data sharing has to be enabled so that start-ups can benefit from it, he added. “We have the vision of growing the economy through the latest technologies and to ensure that we have the latest strategic framework in place for handling data. This would enable the industry to do more innovation,” said Dr Kumar.

Abhishek Singh, CEO, NeGD, MyGov and Digital India Corporation, MeitY, said that artificial intelligence and emerging technologies have the potential to not just propel the economy but create more jobs also. He further said that we are working to create a cloud-based infrastructure for collaborative platforms which can be used by AI entrepreneurs and start-ups for developing new solutions.

“Ethical data is another very important area. Data, as needed, is primarily used at the aggregate level and not in a way which can be harmful to society. Centre of Excellence AI has been planned to address such concerns,” he said.

He said that global partnership is another key area and India has joined the global partnership on AI as a founding member along with other leading countries. “Innovations and collaborations have helped countries during COVID-19, and these can be used to overcome various challenges as well,” Singh noted.

He also highlighted the increasing support of the state governments in promoting AI and other emerging technologies in their state to solve many challenges.

Dr Amit Kumar Pandey, president, CTO and CSO, Hanson Robotics, highlighted various sectors where adoption of AI can help the society and help the citizens. “Robotics and AI can help in reaching the grassroots level of personalized solutions. In India, we need to augment and supplement people’s abilities,” he added.

He further said that India has strong potential to be the global leader in this revolution, not only as a big consumer but also as a creator of technology. Virat Bhatia, chairman, FICCI ICT and Digital Economy Committee said that technology has started gathering pace as compared to the last few years. The paradigm shift in the economic relationship of mankind will be witnessed in the form of accelerated adoption of communication technologies and AI in particular.

“The Fourth Industrial revolution, as the AI era being referred, has already experienced this before the pandemic with backward linkages to cloud computing and big data,” he added.