Nandan Nilekani Says India To Be AI Use-Case Capital Of World
India’s approach to building technology at scale is unique, the Infosys co-founder says.
Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani has said that India is all set to be the artificial-intelligence use-case capital of the world as the country bets on mass-scale implementation of the technology to democratise access to public goods across fields, such as agriculture, education and healthcare. Nilekani — regarded as the founder of Aadhaar, the foundational technology of the India Stack today — was speaking at the launch of Adbhut India in Bengaluru on Tuesday, an event spearheaded by his not-for-profit foundation EkStep and People+AI.
Nilekani outlined the vision for AI in India, and the event marked the launch of several demonstrations of how population-scale AI use cases will be disseminated.
"India's approach to building technology at scale is unique. We have successfully unbundled the building blocks to create population-scale digital public infrastructure for identity, payments and education. We see that India's ideas for technology are being recognised globally," Nilekani said.
After the unbundling, Nilekani said it's now time to re-bundle and make AI work to "empower every individual and identify AI use cases unique to India". "AI will help reduce barriers and personalise at scale," he said.
He emphasised that India's population and its aspirations are its unique advantages.
"The Indian path in AI is different. We are not in the arms race to build the next large-language model," he said.
"We are here to make a difference and our aim is to give this technology in the hands of people. The aspirations of people will drive demand and if you build good technology, people in India will adopt it," he said.
Nilekani said India would show the world on how to innovate in AI frugally. "There's no other way to do it other than doing it at Re 1 per transaction," he said, in a nod to Sarvam.AI's vision for delivering low-cost compute solutions.
Nilekani claimed that the chatter about AI doomerism has quietened. "But the fact is that AI needs to be handled responsibly. The ecosystem shouldn't wait for regulations, and instead self-regulate," he said, referring to something similar to the Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors as a code of ethical conduct.
