The Race for Global Leadership in AI: Where Does India Stand?

Over 50 countries around the world have announced their own national strategies on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and many others are rushing to do so. AI holds great potential as the key driving force for the next phase of economic growth led by technological innovation and no nation wants to be left behind. However, which countries are early movers in the global AI sweepstakes and where does India stand in the race for global AI leadership?

AI generally refers to capability of machines to mimic human-like cognitive functions, such as learning, thinking and problem solving. It comprises a suite of technologies, e.g., machine learning, deep learning, speech recognition, image processing, etc. that underpin broader technologically driven transformations happening in diverse domains: education, healthcare, industry 4.0, autonomous vehicles, etc. AI also has huge potential military applications in the development of autonomous weapons. There is a growing feeling in many countries that leadership in AI would be crucial in determining strategic and geopolitical influence in future, both at regional and global levels.

Several countries and jurisdictions, such as USA, China, European Union, UK, etc., have already announced their national AI strategies and are early movers in this rapidly evolving technology. Most of them have tried to leverage their own strengths to advance their capabilities in AI. However, they all focus on certain common key elements in varying degrees in their strategies: research and development (R&D), skilling, building data ecosystems, developing computing and network infrastructure, collaborative partnerships, ethics, and regulation.

The US launched its first federal initiative on AI in 2016 and a revamped initiative in 2019 with focus on five key elements: R&D, technical standards, training, promoting public trust and confidence, and protecting the American technological advantage while promoting international collaboration. It has generously funded its AI initiative, with a total budget of approximately $1 billion for non-defence AI R&D in 2020. It had also committed $2 billion over five years on AI R&D in defence in 2018.

The European Union (EU) first published its Coordinated Plan on AI in 2018. It has published an updated plan in April 2021 that focuses on four key components: AI development and implementation, R&D and building data ecosystems, skilling and fostering trust in AI, and building strategic leadership in high impact sectors such as climate, health, and mobility. The public and private funding for AI is estimated to be around EUR 20 billion per year till 2030.

China announced its “New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan” in 2017 with the overarching goal of becoming the world leader in AI by 2030 by creating a trillion Yuan (approx. US$ 150 billion) AI industry in China. The plan focuses on developing and deploying AI in a wide range of economic sectors including defence. While the plan and the strategy are central, the implementation is to be done by the local governments and the private sector. The total national and local government funding on AI programmes is estimated to be in the range of tens of billions of US dollars.

The UK announced its AI Sector Deal in 2018 with the key goal of becoming the world’s most innovative economy in AI. It focuses on education and training, R&D, promoting networking and partnerships, regulation to build trust, developing open data ecosystems, and networking and computing infrastructure. The total funding commitment for the strategy is around GBP 2.7 billion.

Where does India stand in the global race for leadership in AI? The NITI Aayog’s discussion paper on national strategy on AI in 2018 focuses on leveraging AI for inclusive growth and mentions five key domains: healthcare, education, agriculture, smart cities, and transportation and mobility. It also notes five key barriers to excellence in AI that need to be addressed: lack of R&D expertise, lack of high-quality datasets, lack of a regulatory framework on privacy and security, high resource cost and low awareness, and absence of a collaborative approach to adoption and applications. It proposed setting up of five centres of research excellence and 20 centres for transformational AI with a total funding of around Rs. 7,000 crores. However, though the strategy paper was published in 2018, India is yet to launch a comprehensive and coordinated national programme on AI. One study by Oxford Insights placed India at the 40^th position in the world in the Government AI Readiness Index out of 172 countries, a drop of 23 places from the 2019 rankings. Though India currently ranks third in the world in terms of total number of research publications in AI, we need to quickly formulate and implement a well-designed national programme on AI with adequate funding to become a global leader in this strategic technology. This is eminently possible if we can leverage our strengths in R&D due to a strong network of academic and research institutions, availability of a huge talent base and high-quality datasets in diverse domains, and presence of a globally competitive IT sector within the country.

(The author is a senior IAS officer and is currently working as Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Electronics and IT. The views are personal.)

The above article appeared in The Economic Times on 22 August, 2021. The link is here: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-bytes/the-race-for-global-leadership-in-ai-where-does-india-stand/articleshow/85520265.cms