According to Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, Information and Broadcasting and Railways has announced that India is planning to launch its own safe and secure indigenous artificial intelligence (AI) model at an affordable cost.
He mentioned that the Indian AI model is a timely step as India is a trusted nation among the comity of nations and therefore it will help India emerge as a more reliable technological powerhouse of ethical AI solutions in the days to come. Backed by a high-end common computing facility, the India AI mission is now closer to customising indigenous AI solutions for the Indian context using Indian languages.
He highlighted that scientists, researchers, developers and coders are working on multiple foundational models in this regard and with the given pace, India AI model is likely to be ready within six months. He added, “Our Prime Minister’s economic thinking is very inclusive. He believes in making modern technology accessible to everyone to ensure the people at the bottom of the pyramid are economically empowered.”
He stated that AI model is beginning with the computation facility of roughly 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs). Soon the remaining 8,693 GPUs will be added. It will largely benefit researchers, students and developers in the beginning. The technical partners who are participating in the mission have expressed a lot of confidence in the ability of the mission to deliver its objective of democratising access to computing and that too at a very competitive rate. Compared to global models computation costing 2.5 to 3 dollars per hour usage, India’s AI Model computation will cost less than less than 100 rupees per hour after 40 per cent government subsidy. The attractive half yearly and annual plans will further make it more affordable.
He further mentioned that DeepSeek can get hosted on Indian servers after security checks so that coders, developers and designers can take benefit of its open source code. He also announced that India is establishing an AI Safety Institute, adopting a techno-legal approach.
The key safety-related projects in this regard include following eight simultaneous efforts to ensure the privacy of data along with ethical auditing of algorithmic efficiency:
- Machine Unlearning (IIT Jodhpur)
- Synthetic Data Generation (IIT Roorkee)
- AI Bias Mitigation Strategy (NIT Raipur)
- Explainable AI Framework (Defence Institute of Advanced Technology, Pune and Minecraft Technologies)
- Privacy Enhancing Strategies (IIT Delhi, IIIT Delhi, IIT Dharwad and Telecom Engineering Centre, TEC)
- AI Ethical Certification Framework (Tool Nishpaksh being developed at IIIT Delhi and TEC)
- AI Algorithm Auditing Framework (Tool Parakh being developed by Civic Data Labs)
- AI Governance Testing Framework (Amrita Vidyapeetham & Telecom Engineering Centre)
