'AI At An Inflection Point In India, 1st Global India AI Summit In Jan', Says Rajeev Chandrasekhar

huge round of applause for the minister and joining him on stage to drive this session Shireen ban the managing editor of CNBC [Applause] TV8 thank you very much Andra uh Mr chandaka what an absolute pleasure it is to have you here ladies and gentlemen I have to say Bangalore uh is uh a city with the maximum amount of energy so uh big to the Bangalore crowd for being here through the morning and I have to say the quality of conversations has been absolutely impeccable uh I've been soaking in learning a lot more than I knew when I walked in through this door about Ai and about what the future of AI looks like Mr chaker without further Ado let's let's get started uh you know through the conversations this morning everybody was of course talking about the opportunities but also talking about some of the crucial challenges that we need to contend with including some of the key deficits whether it's capital or it is compute let me start by asking you about compute because the prime minister at the successful AI uh Summit recently that concluded spoke about the AI mission that the government intends to launch if you can lay the road map out for us on what we intend to do how we intend to bridge the compute deficit so thank you Shen thank you for having me um I'm glad I made it it was touch and go but I made it for this uh program look our approach towards I need to First lay out what our government's approach is and what our prime minister's vision and expectation of AI is and then I can tell you some of the other moving Parts uh we see AI as a very significant Bolton to this already Galloping digital economy so it is a uh in some ways we we we communicate this as a kinetic enabler of our digital economy so we see a significant amount of growth that we will see come out of AI and the e ecosystem that will develop and while there is a lot of conversation about safety trust and the harms of AI we are very focused on that for enabling that we have uh put together an overall framework that talks about AI compute capacity the need to uh for the government to deploy resources Financial Resources uh in creating more foundational models and llms and real life use cases uh so there will be like in the semiconductor model we will fund startups uh we have certainly a very uh clear focus on building an academic industry startup research ecosystem which we refer to as the Innovation and Research Center so we will we think we will have about 10 12 of them around the country that will be part funded by the government uh and uh we will have uh many other adjacent areas including AI chips that we we are going to have as and the India AI Mission uh so AI compute clearly uh since you asked me that let me say that we will have two components to it one is a pure private sector lead very similar to the design in the semiconductor space where we will uh incentivize that investment and then we will have a significant indigen indigenously developed public sector capacity of AI compute coming out of cedc so you'll have both these uh these are these are going to be available to the Indian ecosystem of both the larger Enterprises and the startup ecosystem that are certainly that that Our intention is to get them to catalyze and grow the ecosystem this is broadly as they say back in Delhi mot Mota this is the framework that we have uh early in January hopefully before the second week we will have what will be again I use the semiconductor uh example we'll have the first India AI like a Global India AI Summit where every participant practitioner stakeholder in the Indian AI ecosystem including but not limited to the academic uh network will be participating there will be Global you know practitioners of AI and the idea is really to sort of in a sense launch it there and launch it with all of these enabling elements in place so that nobody then looks back and says I don't have this or I don't have this it's just question of then you know meeting some real milestones in the short term and the near term well thank you very much for laying out mot Mota what the road map looks like I am going to try and uh get some more granularity from you but I you know I have to say this I'm distracted by the two pens and a pencil in your pocket we're talking about AI Mr Chandra Shaker you're actually walking around with a pencil why is that uh 35 years of tech and living and breathing in the hybrid world of uh the future and the past so I I've always had a pencil in my pocket I don't know why but aut a nutr pencil is is always what you walk around with but let me let me try and uh pick up on what you said uh like what we saw with the semiconductor program where the government has actually put an incentive scheme in place which will run over the next few years is that going to be part of the plan you gave us a broad hint that that is what the government is considering at this point in time if you can lay out for us what the thinking is and what the Quantum of government funding is likely to be Shen we know what it will take to make India AI successful we also have an ambition that India AI should play if not a the leading role one of the leading programs that will shape the future of AI so the Ambitions are very clear now to build those Ambitions and to realize those Ambitions we understand very clearly that we need to catalyze and create a seriously global standard ecosystem of startups and innovators and what do they in turn want they need resource resources they need Financial Resources they need AI compute resources they need Partnerships with our academic institutions so we have laid down clearly what in a sense is the formula for our Innovation ecosystem to succeed and be extremely strong and visible player in the shaping of AI as we are going to see it in the next two to five years all of those elements we will put together so it will be very similar to semiconductor where there is a lot of public resources Financial and infrastructure that will be made available to startups large corporates etc etc and clearly for large infrastructure builds like AI compute there will be an element of public sector incentives or subsidies as you saw in the semiconductor space 70,000 CR was the ballpark number as far as semiconductor Mission concern talking about that I I I don't I I I can I don't want to get into be baited into the number but I can certainly tell you that you don't need that kind of number you certainly today uh we are already at an inflection point the AI ecosystem in India to get it really going and fly to the Mars and the Saturn and the moon of AI we certainly don't need those resources uh I can tell you I can report from Jep in Delhi that what we are seeing uh uh in terms of real action real solutions real um IP that is coming out of the Indian ecosystem without all of this it tells me clearly that you don't need anything even remotely close to the semiconductor semiconductor the Investments are huge the capital Investments are huge as you know and um and you you know a Fab cost you $ 78 billion so it's it's not in the same ballpark but like I said the formula we we have designed we know clearly what is required to really make this a really competitive global standard ecosystem uh we need we want winners we we we believe there will be winners out of the India ecosystem in the next one or two years and we certainly know what it will take to make these winners succeed you know since we're talking about the ingredients of what it will take for us to actually uh see winners emerge out of the Indian AI ecosystem let's talk about one of the challenges that people are are putting on the table today and that is procurement as far as gpus are concerned uh the CEO of Nvidia uh in September was talking about supercomputers and how India will be one of the beneficiaries of the faster supercomputer that Nvidia finally puts out into the market but at this point in time open a for instance in his words has about 10,000 gpus uh given the the plans that the Indian government has rolled out as part of open a etc do you believe that that's going to be a challenge you know we have Chris Miller here who who talk about the chip Wars in a second just before this we had a panel talking about the possibility of a glut versus a shortage uh where is the government com in on this Weighing on this for us I I I will very confidently tell you with more than a deep more than a little understanding of the situation that that problem of a shortage is the problem that is going to go away the fastest what we think is the big problem today of AI compute is not really the challenge that we have I think that is a challenge uh there are many other uh players that are trying to catch up with Nvidia nobody likes a trillion dollar market cap and say I don't have it so there are the amds of the world and there are intels of the world who are playing catchup there 6 8 months behind so I don't think I think if you list out all of the challenges that we have to deal with as government or the ecosystem or startups that challenge will be the challenge that will vanish the fastest so what would you put put down as the number one challenge that you're most concerned there are certainly much more fundamental challenges like Talent there this is a this is an industry this is an ecosystem that is going to real need really topnotch uh capability we need PhD we need postdoctoral we need Master's uh programs in our academic institution to churn out those real cutting his talent this is not coding this is not this is no longer uh uh walk in the park in terms of uh the the abilities that are called uh to be brwn to Bear uh to in this in this area so talent I think is for me if uh something keeps me awake uh at nights when I talk about semiconductor or AI it is certainly the big uh the challenge of creating a world standard Talent the infra pieces I can assure you today to all of you here uh and you can hold me responsible for the statement that I think all of these other infra enabler pieces will get solved very quickly um and whether it's an Nvidia GPU that is going to power it or whether it's a mix of envidia AMD x86 whatever don't worry about that I think what we really need to focus is how do we get our academic institutions to really start focusing on the kind of talent that this ecosystem will just swap up in the coming years and do we have it now or don't we have it if we have it how good are they can we make them better uh so I think those are the areas that I'm focused on creating these Innovation and research centers that are housed as Partnerships between startups and academic institutions it's not something that we've done done very well and IIT Dr junjun is here that is an exception a very uh visible exception to the general rule that academic institutions love pushing out degrees I was in a program recently with a lot of vice chancellors and I said 15 years ago the way you measured an institution was how many of them went and got hired by Google you know or how many of how many students went abroad I know in my generation the way you measured an institution as being great is a 80% % of your batch went abroad today it's a different metric that uh academic institutions have to Pivot to which is how many of my students are really going out there and building world-class platforms and systems so so all of these are uh real challenges the obsession with AI computer I understand part of it is fanned by Nvidia I think they love being uh in a shortage economy and so that's fine that's fair but I think that will be the easiest problem to solve and it will be the problem that will vanish the fastest okay the easiest problem to solve and of course capability building uh uh within organizations and Academia you believe is going to be the top priority in the focus area let's now address the issue of Regulation because that again uh perhaps is getting a disproportionate amount of Mind space and headline space as well let's address that issue in the context of the New Delhi declaration you said in a quick conversation with my colleague ashmi a few days ago that we don't intend to talk in abstracts and over the next 6 months you intend to actually put down very clearly what the road map is going to look like now as we Forge consensus between 29 countries on what the road ahead for AI regulation should look like what is India's own position going to be the US is taking a position we've got the Biden Administration issuing an executive order uh you've got the UK doing its thing with The Bletchley declaration you've got the EU moving what is India's own position going to be on regulation so to understand the uh first of all we need to understand that in the last 12 to 18 months the world that talked about AI in very abstract generic you know fuzzy warm terms 18 months ago has suddenly been catapulted into this totally real AI world where every discourse is not now in the abstract now when you talk about safety and Trust of AI it is no longer about ethics or responsibility or responsible use or some bom and fuzzy concept like that it is now post chart GPT uh you can see today I was at The Bletchley Park uh safety Summit that was organized by the government of UK that countries have moved from the abstract of AI to the the real GL granular focus on safety of AI and I said in at Bletchley that I think we are making a mistake by correcting it so much that you are now creating a narrative that is demonizing AI and I said very clearly and this is the stand of the government and you heard the Prime Minister say at GP inaugural as well we consider AI as fundamentally an empowering technology it is a greatest invention of our times it is the greatest empowering technology of the times we believe that it can be used to do things in healthcare disease uh agriculture governance in ways that we would have taken years and decades to do however what the world did not notice in 10 years of social media about the safety and harm and user harms and criminality we should certainly wake up to it now and create not an American framework or a European framework or an Indian framework a global framework the nature of the internet and the and our experiences with social media and the toxicity and the crime and the harms of on it have shown us that not withstanding any country having great rules and laws and regulations Singapore has great laws uh Australia has great uh laws uh China has no laws but they have a great safe internet uh so none of that works because of the ubiquitous nature you're in a provocative mood aren't you with China does not need to be provoke it's just stating the fact is enough uh uh no so the ubiquitous nature of the internet and therefore the fact that almost 80 90% of cyber crimes cyber harms are extra jurisdictional that means the perpetrator is in one jurisdiction the victim is in a second and the crime is in a third so there is there is no way to avoid creating a global understanding on certain principles so what GP has done this year uh in New Delhi is to say look AI should be inclusive it should certainly not be the like the old model where a few countries have it and everybody else is a want to be and you know want to have so it should be inclusive second is that we need a global framework and we need the global framework to be done very quickly because in the next 6 8 10 months AI is going to come at us as uh as Mustafa suan says in his book The Coming wave in a way and form and shape that we are not even ready to anticipate or understand so we need these things in place very quickly and we need this as a granular set of principles and rules that all countries can follow not in the abstract if all of us keep saying AI should be responsible and AI should be ethical that's certainly not enough because I can assure you that one person's ethical interpretation of ethics of interpretation of Ethics is very different from the other and then we'll have an ombudsman sitting there and adjudicating your ethics versus mine sure so I think we need rules we need some guidelines we need principles India has made some steps since 2021 on talking about openness safety and trust and accountability legal accountability of platforms our approach today towards Ai and this is for those practitioners in the room today is through the prism of casting legal accountability on platforms for the safety and Trust of that platform so uh that is broadly our approach to it at this moment and like I said it will evolve we think between delhi's India AI launched and Slovenia we have a conference in February and then we will have something in June July in the next 6 months hopefully fingers crossed we should have a broad understanding about countries of the world if not all but most about what ought to be the guard rails what ought to be the legal guard rails and accountability framework for AI platform no and I I agree with you I think the same debate has happened as far as cryptocurrencies are concerned as well because because it is interjurisdictional and so it doesn't make sense to have country specific guard rails being put in place the difference the me just interrupt is that in crypto and in social media The Innovation ran so far ahead of Regulation that everything everybody was playing catchup the opportunity we have in AI now is AI is at an inflection point if he now agree on what ought to be the rules and guards that allow Innovation as well as protect citizens and users from the HS then we'll be at the right time if you wait for another year then this thing would have gone ahead again and we would be playing catchup governments will be playing catchup and people will be playing catchup you know there there are two points that I want to pick up on one of course is this catchup between Innovation and regulation I'll come to that in just a second but I want to address the risks issue because when the Prime Minister spoke he of course spoke about the fact that AI is the 21st Century's greatest development tool or has the potential to be the 21st Century's great development tool but at the same time he also that it poses the most significant danger to the 21st century as well now as a government what are you most concerned about because again disproportionate headlines going into deep fakes and how the government is most concerned about deep fake 7-Day deadline given to fix accountability and clean this up and so on and so forth but outside of that what are the risks that you're most concerned about there are many risks and I I I one of the things Shireen is to start now and trying to predict all the risk and the whole uh you know the sort of a lay of the land of risks and harms of AI is I don't think anybody in the room even if you have a double PhD post doctoral will you know even try and Hazard a guess like that I think we have we what our approach is make sure there are some principles make sure there's a list of harms and criminality as we see it today and then keep adding to it as we encounter it malicious models bias built into models and algorithms there are so so many things that can come at us at different ways from an AI model how deep fak certainly is a classic example because misinformation and patently false information is a disease that social media has spread and is causing especially in Democratic countries harm to the power of you know like almost intolerable it creates divisions it creates incitement it creates uh fake narratives so misinformation has been a problem with social media now imagine misinformation raised to the power of infinity powered by Ai and Shireen BH is on TV today saying something uh abusive about Rajiv Chandra shakar and that goes viral uh or I am saying something about uh money control and that goes viral I'm I'm I'm not being you get the point know people people who know me know that I would never say anything abusive about anybody yeah exactly and so so people will get a bit agitated if they see you doing it so that's the point I'm saying that in in a society like ours we have 850 million Indians on the internet we are going to be 1.2 billion Indians uh by 25 26 there are different types of people old young women men rural urban highly literate not so literate and then if you have this phenomenon of deep fakes which I have seen today that are going viral at 100x 50x in terms of the velocity and acceleration of these things Vis the truth in in a society like ours it is it really is a problem so PM The Honorable PM raised that as an issue because in a in a country like ours where democracy is sacrifying the electoral process should be as uh unimpacted by these these kind of things deep fakes have and AI therefore has a very very significant power to alter uh distort disrupt create uh problems and it is an issue that we are very very serious about and I think the days when there's there was a little you know please do it if you can it'll be you'll be a good platform if you can uh you know I'll buy you an extra coffee if you do a good job that is all gone now because we are now linking almost every one of the safeguards and guard rails to the criminal law and so the 11 know noo areas for platforms which includes misinformation and patently false information which is deep fakes are essentially now becoming uh judicial under criminal law so that is what we are saying we didn't say 7 Days stop it or else we said 7 Days read the rules in detail take s days to read it and on the Eighth Day realize what the rules say in terms of the consequences of violating the rules well speaking of consequences and and this links back to the question of Regulation that we were having and we had the coera uh founder speaking to us in the morning where he believes that the challenge perhaps in terms of this catchup of innovation and regulation that you spoke of is that regulation must not end up stifling Innovation at this point in time so a light touch approach is perhaps needed warranted at this point in time how do you view that sh let's let's be clear I think we must move away from light touch hard touch I don't even know what that means honestly what does light touch mean is it self-regulation certainly not when we say accountability accountability means platforms have to be accountable under law sure to deliver on safety and Trust expectations from the platform now light touch as in will people go barging into the platform's office uh with heavy Weaponry obviously not uh so I think we need to move away from that Old which is why we are in some of the problems that we are in which is to assume that because it is Tech and Innovation there are no guard rails required it is to ass to assume that platforms have a highly developed sense of moral responsibility to the consumers that they serve that there is no need for the government to intervene which is what we did for the last 20 years uh the US did it India did it all of the countries did it which is that Innovation should not be regulated because Innovation and regulation seem like contradictory terms however we are living in an age and era today where innovation with all the Techno optimism that we believed in certainly does lot of good but Innovation and these platforms also can be used by Bad actors now how do you dissuade the Bad actors from using it a how do you dissuade platforms from creating the ability for Bad actors to use it B that has to be under law and I certainly don't want to characterize this as either soft touch or hard touch I think it is about making sure there is a very predictable clear transparent set of expectations legal expectations from platforms that serve consumers of India consumers of wherever and uh and and and and recognize the fact that they have and The Honorable prime minister said at GP that platforms must also have a better sense of moral obligation to the platform they're developing everything the government cannot do we can't legislate to the last eye on last dot on the eye of the cross the te so it there is needs to be an understanding that this harm and these kind of harms are part of the land the era of self-regulation over no no I think that that that train left the station many many months and years ago uh certainly there's going to be no self-regulation certainly as a elected government or any elected government when you have an obligation to protect uh 1.2 billion citizens from harm and criminality we can't just say we leave it and Outsource it to somebody and they'll do the harm so that that I think we should not even uh uh we should not even think about that uh certainly there is an argument a case that to be made by the AI ecosystem that you don't want to be prescriptive in your regulation uh there are some geographies in some countries that are getting very prescriptive that you need to you need to have this model tested like this you need to have this and that that is not what we are saying we are saying basically the outcomes of Bad actors outcomes of bad models should be uh accountable uh under law fair enough uh you know one of the comments that I picked up on this morning through the course of the conversations was uh that the future of AI as we look at India becoming a AI Nation should be a jugal Bundy a jugal Bundi of public infrastructure uh and private sector Innovation or led by private sector Innovation uh what role uh as conductor if I could use a music analogy do you see the government playing in this jugal bandi look I I can tell you something I've spent over three and a half decades in tech and as being and I consider myself very fortunate to be where I am today because what I see today and to be able to be an enabler coach Mentor sort of cheerleader whatever you want to call it uh is an absolute privilege because I think today the government's role is really to enable success to do whatever is required to be done to get if there are 100 startups here all of them should be able to say I have pursued my dream and I have either succeeded or failed on my own account not because the government put up a roadblock or a government put up a hurdle or somebody didn't sign a file so it is clear in our our it's the the mission that we have been given by our prime minister is very clear there is this huge opportunity of a trillion dollar digital economy we are halfway there we want to get there by 26 AI semiconductors Electronics these are all big pieces of that we as the government will sit and do 24/7 7 days a week 365 days a year to make those Ambitions come true not as implemented by the government but implemented by hundreds and thousands of startups and companies and innovators all around the country and I think you've seen that in the DPI you've seen that in fintech where a government use cases created one of the world's largest fintech ecosystem we are seeing that in semiconductors today and I'd be I was excited to meet uh Chris today uh that the the numbers of people who are jumping in and designing the next generation of device today when none existed just 18 months ago I see the same thing happening in AI so we will play the role of cheerleader albe it with doti and C no skirts uh and we will play the role of an enabler um uh to the best of our ability and I'm absolutely convinced that this Partnership of the government and young Indians all around the country is uh is going to take us over the top and make us a third largest economy we we look forward to much more of that cheerleading but let me end by asking you you gave us examples of what the government has been able to do uh in being able to leverage the digital public infrastructure and what we've seen now as far as UPI concern what we're likely to see with omdc what's the next big moment uh you know that that you Enis at this point in time given the pipes that have already been uh laid as well as the priorities that the government has what's going to be the next big thing I I think you will see uh a significant acceleration of the digitalization of our economy msmes today that have had a patchy record of digitalization are going to now digitalize very rapidly uh accelerate the government has had digitalization in in many silos you'll see a very accelerated all of government type of digitalization and I I think the India DPI story is just going to get better bigger with more and more opportunities for startups to innovate around that indp it's not a static situation there's going to be AI in that there's going to be a lot of intelligence and smarts built into what we are doing digitally so I think look I say this when I go to any college this is certainly if you're a young techy starting out this is certainly the most exciting time in the history of India and I must say one thing that you're the luckiest generation ever in the in independent India's history so you guys are lucky I hope you just take care of use the opportunity and do good uh well the luckiest generation in the words of Rajiv Chandra Shaker so make make good use of that opportunity I'll end by asking you uh do you chat GPT or Bard or I mean are you are you using artificial intelligence yourself I'm all over the place I'm you're all over the place that's not a very nice thing to say no no no I'm I'm all over the place as in I'm on all of them I'm a platform agnostic as I should be I'm also on the dark internet so I I if you if you see me in a chat room there and you see somebody who's uh got a moniker of a minister that's me uh trying to e drop and see what you guys are talking about so om present Rajiv chandraker many many thanks for joining us ladies and gentlemen a big round of applause for the minister for joining us here this afternoon I'm going to request you to just stay on for for a couple of minutes more we have a big reveal coming up Chandra over to you thank you so much what a wonderful session Shireen and Sir bigger round of applause Bangalore um sir you know Shireen asked about your Quirk with pencil and pens I believe there's a unique clock in your office that runs in riverse can you tell us a little about that so when I got this job it was about uh 1100 days to elections and I would uh have these meetings with my officers and they would keep telling me what is your hurry I mean there's uh many days left so I then installed this little countdown reverse clock and I would tell them look I have only 1,000 days left and now it's about 49 days left I say I'm in a hurry because I have to finish this work uh as before the time runs out and you guys obviously can stay on and forever and ever I can't I don't even know if I I have a job so hopefully you'll be able to reset the clock for five more years that's our home but sir please stay on I'd like to invite Hosea moala director systems engineering India and Sak Pao Alto networks to join us on stage to felicitate the [Applause] minister [Applause] thank you Hosea miala I'd now like to invite Mahesh makija technology Consulting leader ebi to join us on stage to present the idea of India generative ai's potential to catalyze change [Laughter] [Music] well ladies and gentlemen uh I'm sure we have copies of the report that you can go over take back home with you uh read the fine print but for those of you who haven't had a sneak peek at it I'm going to get very quickly the big reveal the big numbers thanks thanks Shireen so so the report will be with you soon um just three things I want to say about the report one is it gives you a state of the union of India we pulled around 250 execs across different Industries and just got a sense check of where they are on AI and generative Ai and you know the finding spoiler alert no big surprises we found that almost three and four of them not prepared not clear on where the value is going to come from how the technology will evolve what are the use cases but the flip side huge amount of optimism optimism how to use this technology right that's sorry just one more two seconds and then uh like Shirin said the big reveal really is we did a I think what the first Deep dive in terms of what will be the GDP impact of this technology of India our findings are that by 2030 it will add almost $1.5 trillion to the Indian economy cumulatively so really really optimistic and uh do give us feedback after you read it wow that's the big number thank you for that sir one final thing we have Chris Miller all the way from the US the author of Chip War and he would like to present an autographed copy of his book I know you've read his book but this is one that one for Keeps at your office along with the digital [Applause] [Music] clock [Music] thank you so much for that sharid and thank you so much Minister Chandra Shaker huge round of [Applause] applause

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Length: 36min 14sec (2174 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 16 2023