The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) are working on fair development of artificial intelligence (AI), as the technology permeates different sectors and increasingly becomes an integral part of everyday life.
The Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC), a technical body under DoT, has proposed to develop voluntary standards for assessing and rating the robustness of Al systems in telecom networks and digital infrastructure. It has already initiated stakeholder consultations on the subject and invited inputs, the last date for which is December 15, 2024.
In addition, the departments have signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Amrita University, and the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology in Pune among others. Meanwhile, under expressions of interest (Eols) called by MeitY, several academic institutes have tied up with the TEC.
In early October 2024, IndiaAI has selected eight ‘Responsible Al’ projects against the Eols floated under the safe and trusted Al pillar of the IndiaAI Mission. These projects are aimed at safe and trusted development, deployment, and adoption of Al, by developing indigenous responsible tools and frameworks that are contextualised to India’s social, cultural; and linguistic diversity. Further, the themes of the eight MeitY-funded projects are: machine learning (ML), synthetic data generation, Al bias mitigation strategy, explainable AI framework, privacy enhancing strategy, Al ethical certification framework, Al algorithm auditing tool and Al governance testing framework.
