National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence

Punit ShuklaNITI Aayog

Trends that define India

Indian are going digital at an

unprecedented paceIndia is building platforms for collaborative innovation

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State is innovating and using digital tools for service delivery like never before

India is among the top 2 countries globally on many dimensions of digital adoption

India’s digital adoption is growing at a rapid pace

● Mobile data price dropped 25 times

● Data consumption grew 23 times

● Fintech adoption 52% (ranked 2nd after China)

● Global avg 33%

Fintech Adoption Index by EYData costs ($/GB)(Dropped from $12.45 to $0.51)

Data consumption

(MB)

(Jumped from 89 MB to 1945 MB)

Digital Public Goods - Bedrock of Collaborative Innovations

● Over 1 billion identities - fastest digital platform to reach 1 bn users● Brought down the cost of financial inclusion and service delivery

● Open API architecture to provide infrastructural access● Identity - eSign - Payments - Storage

● “Most evolved, sophisticated public digital payments infrastructure in the world” (Fidelity’s Annual Global Faster Payments Report)

● Has grown to over 482 mn transactions per month (Oct 2018)

● Over 330 mn new bank accounts created● India contributed 55% new bank accounts created globally (World Bank)

Platforms give rise to more platforms

National Health Stack

Digital Sky

Bharat Bill Payment System

GSTN

Ayushman Bharat

Electronic Toll Collection - FasTag

JAM, India Stack

Government adopting digital tools at a rapid pace

Direct Benefits TransferCumulative transfers of over USD 70 billion Public Financial Management System (PFMS)

● Real-time tracking of govt. funds

● Over 1.7 mn implementing agencies

● Record 9.8 mn transactions on one day (March 28, 2018)

USD 12 billion

Digital transformation of taxation systems

● 68.4 million Income Tax Returns filed in FY 2017-18

● 10 million new returnees

● Grown by 26% annually

● 98.5 % of all IT returns filed online

Income Taxes

● 50% increase in unique indirect tax payers

● 3.4 million new payers

● Increased formalization of economy

● GSTN to handle 10 million+ businesses

GST

Government-to-Citizen interaction shifting online

● Over 158,000 sellers have listed over 600,000 products

● Transactions over $1.95 billion value

● Government’s largest citizen engagement platform

● Over 5 million registered users on the platform

AI has the potential to add significant economic value

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Added to national income from emerging technology areas

+15%

Increment to the economy, taking it to $7.4 trillion

India - 2035

USD 957 billion

#AIforAll

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Government push is required for sectors not driven by ‘top line’ growth

Identify unique strategy aligned to the country’s needs

Focus on some sectors of high impact

Major challenges in important sectors

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Income disparity between farmer and non-agriculture workforce nearly ~ 300%

Unpredictable weather and climate change affecting productivity ;

Weak processing infrastructure leading to wastage and price volatility ;

Fertilizer and pesticide imbalance causing lower productivity;

Affordability remains a problem with private expenditure accounting for ~70% of healthcare expenses, of which ~62% is out-of-pocket expenditure, probably one of the highest in the world;

A sizeable part of the population (~63 million) are faced with poverty every year because of their healthcare expenditure

Low Retention Rates : 70.7% at elementary level and 57.4% at secondary level;

Poor Learning Outcomes : In rural areas, only 47.8% of Class 5 children could read Class 2 level text and only 26% could do Class-5-level arithmetic

Population in urban areas expected to rise by 60% in 2050;

Unplanned urbanisation presents challenges such as congestion, over pollution, high crime rates, poor living standards

413 lives lost daily in Road Accidents in 2016 – Number highest in the last 12 years

Agriculture Healthcare Education Urbanization Mobility

Our key recommendations to improve AI ecosystem

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Promoting ResearchFocus on both core and applied research; grand challenges and CERN for AI

SkillingDecentralized training mechanisms, promotion of job creation in new areas

Accelerating adoptionThree pronged marketplace approach for data, annotation and deployable models

Ethics, Privacy and SecurityFAT framework, consortium of ethics council

Government’s role critical in supporting

partnerships, providing access to

infrastructure, fostering innovation

through research and creating the demand by seeking solutions

for addressing various governmental

needs.

Promoting research: Background

Current gaps -● Lack of adequate talent to build and

deploy AI systems at scale

● Lack of collaborative / interdisciplinary approach

● Lack of facilities, computing infrastructure and access to data

● Lack of connect with stakeholders and practitioners to convert outputs to outcomes

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Only 4% of AI professionals in India have worked on emerging technologies such as deep learning and neural networks

Serious research work in India is limited to less than 50 researchers, concentrated mostly at institutes like IITs, IIITs and IISc

India ranks a dismal 19th globally in the country wise H-Index

Promoting research: Recommendations

Set Up of a Simplified and Agile 2-Tiered Structure • CORE (Centres of Research Excellence in AI) – Focusing on core research and creation of new knowledge in

AI.• ICTAIs (International Centre for Transformational Artificial Intelligence) – Focusing on Applied Research and

development of commercial applications for AI.

AIRAWAT - Common Compute Platform for COREs /ICTAIs

Grand Challenges for ‘Moonshot’ Projects – DARPA Model

International collaboration - CERN for AI

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