Status of Artificial Intelligence in India

Two major waves of Technology Age include: the Information Technology (IT) wave; and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Wave. The software wave was 30 years ago, which was taught through books and in class rooms exclusively. India was slow to adopt software service as compared to America. Today, adoption of AI wave will be much faster and only slightly behind the leading countries. Many of the latest AI approaches are available to learn online – along with huge suites of open-source tools (from scikit-learn to Tensor Flow and beyond).

AI wave could create economic value, including profits and efficiencies, of $2.7trn in businesses alone over the next 20 years what with additional big flows through military applications. In 2017 companies spent around $22bn on AI-related mergers and acquisitions, about 26 times more than in 2015.

Google’s boss has gone so far as to declare that AI will do more for humanity than fire or electricity. AI will create a world that is faster, more efficient, and smarter. Innovation, with AI at the forefront, is the best source of future growth. AI also means fewer mistakes, lower prices, and better products.

AI was founded as an academic discipline in 1956 as part of computer science, sometimes called machine intelligence, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans. The AI field drew upon computer science, information engineering, mathematics, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and many other fields.

AI research was divided into subfields based on technical considerations, such as particular goals (e.g. “robotics” or “machine learning”), the use of particular tools (“logic” or artificial neural networks), or deep philosophical differences, besides versions of search and mathematical optimisation, and methods based on statistics, probability and economics.

During the new millennium, AI experienced a resurgence following concurrent advances in computer power, large amounts of data, and theoretical understanding. AI techniques have become an essential part of the technology industry, helping to solve many challenging problems.

The development of AI has the potential to fundamentally transform civilian and military life in the coming decades. Consequently, AI will be a driver and structural forces reshaping the global order. Already the global race for AI supremacy is featuring prominently in a great power competition between the United States and China.

China is implementing ‘grandiose plans’ to ‘lead the world’ in AI. Its tech companies have been at the forefront and integral to the realisation of China’s AI ambitions. China is also luring more expats back home to join the AI ecosystem. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army pursues a range of military applications of AI. Tsinghua University, China’s MIT, has highlighted its commitment to supporting China’s national strategy of military-civil fusion, including building the High-End Military Intelligence Laboratory with support from the Central Military Commission. Meanwhile, Baidu has partnered with a research institute from the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, to create the Joint Laboratory for Intelligent Command and Control Technologies, which will focus on using big data, AI, and cloud computing to enhance military command information systems.

In contrast, USA is still to release a true framework for a national AI strategy. In February 2019 only, USA launched the AI Initiative. In November 2019, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) released its interim report, which outlines five lines of effort to help ensure U.S. technological leadership that includes attracting the best talent available in the rest of the world (increase H1B visas from current cap of 80,000 to 2,00,000). Otherwise, on its current path, the USA may fall behind China in the deployment of AI-based systems.

India is emerging as the hub for “Digital Skills” – Digital Innovation Hub. The country spends $1.6 bn annually on training workforce in the sector. The industry is the largest employer within the private sector, employing 3.9 mn people. India is transforming into a digital economy with over 627 million internet users in 2019.

But where does India stand today in AI? India remains a laggard way behind! Successive governments are responsible for the failure to formulate an action plan. However, the Modi-led NDA has taken the initiative to develop a plan for AI. But there is a need to think big and take bold action to harness the technology’s potential and address the challenges to help India survive and thrive in a global market.

Just as Google, Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon are battling to serve the cloud computing and machine learning needs of the US government, the next three to five years may lead to a similar dynamic within India. As the Indian government pushes for digitisation and enacts more AI initiatives, private firms will flock to win big contracts – adding to the pool of funds to develop new technologies and spin out new AI and data science-related startups.

However, a formal policy is yet to be released to include a mission statement and strategy – end objectives to be achieved in specific time frames, ways and means – most beneficial to all sectors of human activity. In 2017, a Task Force on AI for India’s Economic Transformation by the Commerce and Industry Department was created. In February 2018, the government think-tank, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog spearheaded the national program on AI focusing on research.

As on date, the government initiatives are restricted to digitisation, healthcare augmenting the productivity of existing pathologists and radiologists to reduce costs and precision agriculture using AI real-time advisory based on satellite imagery, weather data, etc., to increase farm yields where the farm production levels are low.

In sum, the pace of innovation around establishing a comprehensive AI strategy for the future isn’t comparable to America or China today. Of late, there is increased AI interest what with industries working to skill their manpower to enable themselves to compete with other global players, educational institutions working on their curricula to include courses on machine learning and other relevant areas and individuals and professionals acquiring and upgrading their own skills.

Most of the traction today seems to be in the form of AI pilot projects from the government in agriculture and healthcare and the emergence of AI startups in Indian software hubs. Karnataka has launched the Center for Excellence in AI setup by the GOI and NASSCOM in Bangalore to groom AI professionals.

In sum, India has a major advantage over other countries in terms of talent, strong IT services, an off shoring industry to harness the power of AI and a vibrant startup ecosystem in the world, with three to four startups born daily. But, India needs to overcome the inherent weaknesses if it needs to exploit the AI wave in being. Ambiguity among policy and decision makers about applications of AI still persists. Furthermore, nascent and very limited AI talent is only available as on date. And, cultural factors on account of failures, the copy-catting business models and inadequacy of venture capital are other constraints.

Even now there is lack of collaboration between industry and academia specifically in the AI domain. Data science courses in India are tailored to technique and not to business context and application. Industry-university partnerships where students can work with real world data science applications and reskilling of existing workforces are yet to take shape in India.

Although there are Venture Capitalists in AI starting to emerge, access to venture funding is rare.

What is the road map, therefore, ahead for exploiting the full potential of AI? First and foremost is the policy formulations and strategy – time bound – to implement in various domains. The opportunity available due to existing IT and ITeS structure and the substantial and continuing growth in internet connectivity, to hypothetically leap directly to the cutting edge of programming, development, and data science must be fully exploited by close collaboration between the government and the industry.

Focusing on BPO and IT services sector is an opportunity for all businesses and markets. The BPO industry must use the opportunity in data cleaning and data tagging in massive datasets to train and error-correct AI.

The key for Indian BPO, IT, and tech firms will be, therefore, to pick the domains of focus where their expertise is strongest, and where economic opportunity is the largest. For this reason, should India decide to lead the world in automating and augmenting its BPO and IT services businesses, it will be competing with startups and with large consulting firms on many fronts.

Next, timely government funding initiatives is vital. The level of funding so far is much smaller in India compared to US and China. Thus far, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, has been funding projects by educational institutions in the areas of ubiquitous computing and wireless sensor networks for real-time landslide monitoring and perception engineering. The ministry has also been operating a Technology Incubation and Development of Entrepreneurs (TIDE) scheme for facilitating technology innovation over the last decade. The recommendation here would be to develop more such public sector initiatives where private sector firms can gain large contracts, strengthening the government-industrial complex in AI.

So, it is vital to build a network of alliances between the services and products industries, academia, government organisations and start-ups. As part of it, upgrading the IT education to be on par with USA and China is an imperative in two domains. Today, India is world’s outsourcing destination, and many of the firms in the crowd sourced data cleaning and tagging space have large teams in India, and for good reason: Costs are low. Indian industry must pull out of a “copycatting” mentality (i.e. being a cheaper version of some Western business model), and become the kind of firms that the rest of the world references as “leading” and “premier,” not merely “less expensive.” Otherwise, with the companies in the West up skilling their workforce with new technology solutions with AI, Indian company’s dominance in the back-office domain would be eroded and bound to lose outsourcing business. Staying at the bottom of the value chain is economically limiting, and completely unlikely to position India as a technology leader.

India must not only retain its best tech talent, but attract the Indian talent working on foreign shores by paying higher wages, doing more interesting and valuable work, as opposed to losing them as many of India’s most promising graduates leave for the USA, Europe, or elsewhere.

Furthermore, having young talent working on more high-level problems in the IT services space most likely result in new startups. Only with more promising talent and projects, will VC investments grow.

Rapid strides in AI absorption and development is vital to exploiting the cost-competitive advantage and large source of qualified IT workforce by focusing on AI initiatives, adequate funding, PPP partnerships, joint foreign collaborations with industry and academies. In house and on job up-skilling of workforce, pay higher wages not only to retain but also to attract Indian talent working in foreign countries and provide conducive work environment and recognition for contributions to innovation are an imperative.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to usher in the next wave of transformation in wars and violence. In the summer of 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin argued that the nation that had a leading edge in the sphere of AI would be able to “rule the world”. AI is designed to improve self-control, self-regulation, and self-actuation of combat systems due to its inherent computing and decision-making capabilities. AI will be embedded in Gen 5 and 6 combat systems mostly autonomous.

For example, AI-enabled systems can assist with collecting images or signals collected by drones and categorising and transmitting them according to the requirements of multiple recipients. Thus, a reconnaissance drone’s data could be transmitted in real time to a frontline artillery unit as well as to an HQ intelligence cell without requiring time-consuming “translations” at various interfaces.

AI military applications in India are still at nascent stage, mostly at concept and drawing board stage. Preoccupied with the huge challenges being faced on operational and logistic fronts, the doctrinal thinking and perspective planning of the Armed Forces of the AI/robotics/ Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) paradigm is yet to take off. The Armed Forces lag behind in operationalising even yester-year technologies: Network Centric Warfare, Information Operations and C4I2SR systems.

In 2013, the DRDO claimed that they are developing “robotic soldiers” that would be ready for deployment around 2023. DRDO’s main facility working is the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), whose vision, mission and objectives all refer to development of intelligent systems/ AI/ Robotics technologies. CAIR has made some headway in making a few prototype systems, such as “Muntra” UGV, “Daksh” remotely operated vehicle, wall climbing and flapping wing robots, etc. It is now in the process of developing a Multi Agent Robotics Framework (MARF) for catering to a myriad of military applications. However, these efforts alone do not meet the emerging battlefield requirements.

Only in February 2018, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) created a multi-stakeholder task force represented by members from the government, Defence Services, Academia, Industry Professionals, DRDO, Defence Public Sector Undertakings, National Cyber Security Coordinator, ISRO and BARC for Strategic Implementation of Artificial Intelligence and Defence. The task force gave its report in June 2018 that led to the adoption of the creation of the institutional framework for AI policy implementation with guidelines for the country’s defence forces.

In February 2019, the MoD established a high-level Defense AI Council (DAIC) under the chairmanship of Minister of Defence with three service chiefs, and defense secretary and secretary of defence production are members assigned with the task of providing strategic direction towards the adoption of AI in defence. A strategy for defence AI is in the pipeline being formulated by Integrated Defense Staff.

Recently, Union Defense Minister Rajnath Singh announced that 25 defence-specific AI products would be developed by 2024. However, the announcement did not provide details of specific initiatives. The DPSUs and ordnance factories have been asked to develop AI-enabled products. And, the budget for AI-specific projects is drastically small compared to countries like the US and China.

The Pentagon plans to spend $3.7 billion on unmanned systems in fiscal year 2020, plus $0.9 billion on AI systems and $2.6 billion on hypersonic weapons. The market size of AI in US military is expected to reach USD 18.82 billion by 2025. The Chinese UAV market is expected to increase to ¥uan 46 billion.

Let me highlight key AI military applications: decision making at the apex national security level; more precise, faster situational awareness – monitoring, analyses and assessments – to support a range of military activities; accuracy of target recognition in complex combat environments and probability-based forecasts of enemy behaviour, aggregation of weather and environmental conditions; assessments of mission approaches, and suggested mitigation strategies; embedding AI into weapons and other systems used on land, naval, airborne, and space platforms for qualitative enhancement of performance, which are less reliant on human input and less maintenance and empower autonomous and high-speed weapons to carry out collaborative attacks; enhance cyber security with web security systems that can record the pattern of cyber attacks and develop counter-attack tools to tackle them; more realistic combat simulation of exercises and training; credible simulations of future technologies and their applications; crucial role in military logistics to lower transportation costs and reduce human operational efforts; and Healthcare with Robotic Surgical Systems (RSS) and Robotic Ground Platforms (RGPs).

Let me also record the US end objectives for using AI-based technologies in their defence forces to include: achieve fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology by 2015 with one-third of the operational ground combat vehicles unmanned. In 2014, former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced the “Third Offset Strategy” stating that rapid advances in AI will define the next Gen warfare.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has declared its objective to be the world leader in AI by 2030 in pursuit of “intelligentisation” as a new imperative of its military modernization – first outlined by President Xi Jinping in 2017 at the 19th National Party Congress. This is dynamic shift from 2004 White Paper on National Defence that outlined the importance of informationisation.

China has set up two major research organizations focused on AI and unmanned systems. Funding remains classified, but clearly in billions of dollars. By 2014, there were 230 UAV developers/ manufacturers, with over two third of them are private enterprises. The development tracks well with China’s rapid development and fielding of machine learning, autonomy, and robotics in warfare.

China has developed several autonomous vehicles. Several new drones were on display on 1 October 2019 Day. China revealed the GJ-11 (Gongji [“attack”]-11), a carrier-based UCAV. Also, the WZ-8 is an air-launched supersonic drone. Lethal autonomous weapons, also known as “killer robots, have been tested. In November 2019, it carried a description of a swarm of drones, operated by a cloud “brain” that could detect a target enemy and automatically attack. China has also developed “Marine Lizard”, which is not a UCAV, but an autonomous amphibious landing vehicle that can “plot out its own route, swim to shore, avoid obstacles, and it can also be remotely controlled by an operator.

Furthermore, the PLA focus is also on simulations and other exercises aided by AI to improve training and combat readiness. Decision-making systems that run trial-and-error simulations of potential confrontation scenarios have been tested. China has introduced the notion of the “algorithm game”, which could predict what happens on the battlefield, and may therefore offer a cognitive advantage to Chinese troops. Another scenario referred to a malicious code that could invade a rival’s network, learn its systems and steal its secrets.

In facial recognition technology, China is ahead, with top AI companies SenseTime and Megvii, in wide use by local law enforcement in some parts of China, particularly Xingjian, Shaanxi, and Shenzhen. Eventually using the technology to target military persons of interest is highly probable.

Add to it, the race to dominate the 5G networks. The future of 5G is still taking shape. The standards and foundational technologies that will underpin it are still works in progress. Chinese-designed 5G networks will provide near-persistent data transfer back to China that the Chinese government could capture at will. China could “weaponize cities”. Security will be of utmost importance.

In sum, future “intelligent” wars will be fought with smart autonomous weapons and systems, supported by AI capable of analyzing situations, undertaking tasks and missions on their own. The employment of UAVs – also known as drones – with integrated AI include: patrol border areas, identify potential threats, and transmit information about these threats to response teams; strengthen the security of military bases; safety and efficacy of military personnel in battle or at remote locations.

In contrast with the USA, China, Russia, Israel and even a small nation like Norway, the recent Indian initiatives are far behind. All that has been achieved is helmet mounted AI-based night vision device that will warn soldiers of unusual activity across different terrains and in high altitude areas, which has a wristband attached to it that vibrates when the device picks up on movement in the area. And, the soldiers also have access to live translator that helps soldiers positioned along Line of Actual Control, China to interact with Chinese soldiers. The device translates Mandarin to Indian languages.

There are limitations that cannot be wished away. It would thus be wrong to think that they could generate outcomes based on perfect rationality. Even machine learning cannot guarantee the absence of biases or analytical errors.

Next, AI-generated analyses and inferences could gain an oversized degree of authority in political decisions. And, the possibility remains that the acceleration of decision making may contribute to the escalation, since the actors would see their respective windows of opportunity shrinking. Moreover, even high-performance algorithms are not immune to being misled by fairly traditional means of espionage and deception. For instance, it is conceivable that AI might mistakenly assess certain patterns of behavior as innocuous if they occur often enough without entailing the feared outcomes.

Emerging AI military applications are exotic and radically change the ways wars and violence will be waged. It is high time for decision makers at Apex Level to enunciate National Strategy for AI specifically for armed forces with utmost expedition. Also, expand funding for academic research on next-Gen technologies and by providing tax credits to incentivize investments in the technology, besides expanding funding for academic research on next-generation technologies, and by providing tax credits to incentivize investment in the technology while actively supporting DRDO (CAIR) initiatives. India must continue to explore all options to ensure that the 5G future will be secure and competitive.

(The writer is a senior columnist and writes on political and strategic issues)