REGULATING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)
WHY IN NEWS ?
- Recently India’s B20 task force has recommended setting up a regulatory framework for “responsible AI”.
WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ?
- Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems.
- Specific applications of AI include expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition and machine vision.
- AI systems work by ingesting large amounts of labeled training data, analyzing the data for correlations and patterns, and using these patterns to make predictions about future states.
- AI is important for its potential to change how we live, work and play.
- It has been effectively used in business to automate tasks done by humans, including customer service work, lead generation, fraud detection and quality control. In a number of areas, AI can perform tasks much better than humans.
- Artificial neural networks and deep learning AI technologies are quickly evolving, primarily because AI can process large amounts of data much faster and make predictions more accurately than humanly possible.
DANGERS OF AI :
- Some of the major dangers of AI include misinformation (including creating convincing fake images and video known as deepfakes), privacy concerns, the loss of jobs, bias and discrimination, market and financial volatility, and a so-called singularity in which AI surpasses human intelligence.
- AI is expected to make some 85 million jobs obsolete between 2020 and 2025, but it is also expected to create 97 million jobs by 2025.
NEED OF REGULATING AI:
- Talk of regulating artificial intelligence (AI) really became mainstream in the aftermath of the popularization of private tech firm OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
- Since new AI tools can mimic human cognitive abilities and create deepfakes that are hard to distinguish from original audio and video, global tech leaders say a framework is needed to regulate the tech.
- The B20 Summit said regulating AI would be crucial to enable global real-time payments, maintain trust at workplaces, prevent cyber attacks and, most importantly, ensure that the internet does not become fragmented by regulations in different countries.
- OpenAI chief Sam Altman has said AI must be regulated to reduce its role in fraud and warfare. But laws must not restrict innovation.
- A B20 task force asked India to set up regulations to establish checks on firms in India and globally, while enabling innovation.
COUNTRIES AND TECHNOLOGY COLLABORATION:
- AI is a global technology whose impact already transcends borders.
- By working together, countries can ensure that AI is used for the benefit of humanity and not for its detriment, by exacerbating inequalities, eroding privacy, or reinforcing biases.
- Despite geopolitics and corporate rivalry, a global framework is possible.
- In 2020, India helped found the Global Partnership on AI, a 29-nation body. Its goal is to collaborate on establishing a common global framework for responsible and ethical AI.
- This year, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI and others created an industry body, Frontier Model Forum, that will follow common oversight and governance rules.
- Shortly before this, these firms joined Meta and Amazon to agree to the US government’s AI safety assurances.
INDIAN LAWS VIS-A-VIS AI:
- In 2018, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry constituted a task force on Al to develop a policy framework and identify relevant use cases for AI technology.
- The task force submitted its report in 2019, which outlined the need for a national strategy for AI and recommended the, establishment of an AI research Institute.
- In June, the minister of state for information technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said regulation to check risks from AI is being considered for the upcoming Digital India Act.
- In July, the apex telecom regulatory body Trai floated a consultation paper that proposed setting up a body to regulate AI through a “risk-based framework”.
- The new Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, introduced checks on data scraping for AI.
- But as of now, there are no direct regulations in India on AI.
WAY FORWARD:
- International cooperation allows for the sharing of best practices, development of common standards, and the establishment of ethical guidelines that can guide the responsible development of AI technologies across jurisdictions/geographies.
SYLLABUS: MAINS, GS-3, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
SOURCE: THE HINDU
