Budget 2024 Expectations: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is turning out to be a game-changer for economies across the world. Be it banking, photography, editing, or running businesses, AI’s role is rapidly growing. But before making use of this technology, we must keep in mind the ethical considerations. It means developing self-regulatory organisations and auditing certification processes to promote ethical and trusted AI platforms.
The Union Budget 2024 can lay down the direction by incentivising the initiatives through expenditure on projects where responsible usages of AI are encouraged and verified information is delivered to end-users. Let’s understand more about this.
Why is It Important?
1. Preventing Consumer Harm
Adhil Shetty, CEO of Bankbazaar.com, says, “Consumers need protection from the potential harm caused by incorrect AI-generated information. They also deserve a clear path to address grievances. To achieve this, we need standards for testing, verifying, and certifying AI systems to mitigate risks and ensure they work correctly.”
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2. Compliance with Privacy Rules
The AI systems have to comply with the Indian privacy law and sector-specific privacy norms. AI systems have to meet this requirement of standards just like any entity dealing with personal data, in an attempt to ensure protection against violation of their data privacy.
3. Combating Bias
AI systems should not perpetuate the violations of anti-discrimination laws in India. This would involve questions about biased datasets being prima facie rejected and also adhering to new norms of algorithm accountability and anti-discrimination. The bias will be minimized through standardization and disclosure in data collection practices, ensuring that diverse groups are represented. We need some baseline of anti-discrimination and inclusion policies in the development and deployment process for AI.
4. Empowering Local Content Creators
They should know how algorithms impact content visibility, ranking, and monetization, and be open about the use of optimization strategies. Thereafter, they should provide details about the sources of the content, author credibility, and conflict of interest.
Union Budget 2024
This is the right time when AI technology ecosystem needs to be supported by budget expenditure and like any other sector let this grow within the regulatory environment. In March, the Cabinet sanctioned more than Rs 10,300 crore to the India AI Mission for further promoting the AI ecosystem in the country. The financial infusion is spread over five years, catalysing different components and boost India’s positioning in the global AI scene.
The funds would be utilised for some of the important initiatives under the India AI Mission. One such big-ticket project is the India AI Compute Capacity, which will establish future-proof and scalable AI computing infrastructure. It would involve the deployment of over 10,000 graphics processing units through public-private partnerships, thereby promoting advanced AI research and development. The mission also envisions support to AI startups, especially in the domain of financial backing for AI ventures, fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in that sector.
The Union Budget 2024 can further incentivise initiatives for the adoption of responsible and ethical uses of AI, benefiting consumers and content creators alike and businesses adopting this technology. It will also be important to address the key risks in order to encourage the responsible use of the AI technology.