Artificial Intelligence and digital governance

Artificial Intelligence is a promising endeavour, but citizen rights must be taken care of properly.

 Artificial Intelligence and digital governance

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• The story: There has been the proliferation of digital adoption across India, facilitated by the government’s focus on the JAM Trinity (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) to create a digital identity for each citizen. From an internet penetration of just 4% in 2007, India now has nearly 55% of the population online, and is slated to reach one billion users by 2025.
• The opportunity: India now has an exceptional opportunity to harness the data being created to benefit citizens through adoption of frontier technologies. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes ubiquitous, India has the potential to leverage these massive datasets to build frameworks to empower people, create equity and race towards its goal of USD 1 trillion of economic value using digital technologies by 2025.
• Potential of AI: A recent report indicated that AI can provide a global economic value addition of up to USD 15.7 trillion by 2030. Recognising this potential, the government released the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (NSAI) in June 2018.

1. It serves as a roadmap for the government to adopt artificial intelligence to increase efficiency in delivery of services, collaborate with the private sector to enhance public sector potential, and develop capacities to embrace and deploy innovation.
2. Deregulation of Geospatial Sector - The government deregulated the geospatial sector allowing private players to bring state-of-the- art solutions to the sector, and spur innovation in AI-enabled hotspot mapping and analytics. In India this can lead to transformation of various sectors such as infrastructure, health, and help in designing climate change resilient cities

• Geospatial: Geospatial information is geography and mapping. It is “place based” or “locational” information, basically data tied to and portrayed on a map.
• Reducing energy losses: Energy is a key sector which can benefit from the wide scale adoption of AI. By using AI in the energy sector, renewable energy generators and Discoms can cut losses and increase efficiencies by better predicting grid load management, and ultimately making the adoption of renewables cost-effective. Delhi and Kolkata alone account for USD 36 million of annual loss in revenue from renewable energy losses; across the country, the number is significantly higher — in the billions of dollars.
• Governance: With the use of AI, the Power Ministry’s Renewable Energy Management Centres (REMCs) will be able to provide enhanced renewable energy forecasting, scheduling, and monitoring capabilities by processing large datasets of past weather, generation output history, and electricity requirement in a region.
• AI solutions to Emerging Trends: Digital transformation through AI can help governments in being more responsive to emerging trends and act accordingly. Within the government machinery, policymakers are moving forward with incorporating AI solutions for effective tax monitoring, data compliance etc.
• Challenges: AI systems learn by analyzing huge volumes of data and they keep adapting through continuous modelling of interaction data and user-feedback. The right to privacy can be under threat due to unauthorized access to one’s activity data. Technology giants are investing heavily in regard to artificial intelligence, both at the scientific/engineering and also at the commercial and product development level. These big players have an unmatched advantage when compared to any ambitious competitor out there which is a symptom of data-oligarchic society. AI companies are building intelligent machines that perform tasks typically carried out by low-income workers. For example self-service kiosks to replace cashiers, fruit-picking robots to replace field workers, etc. Using AI, a company can drastically cut down on relying on the human workforce, and this means that revenues will go to fewer people.
• Summary: While AI holds promise for the future, and is here to stay, without the proper legal and constitutional system to support citizen rights, it will be a solution best avoided.

 

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