India and the Artificial Intelligence Revolution

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have stimulated fervent interest from both the private sector and governments across the globe, as the possibility of mass-produced consumer product machinery with humanlike intelligence inches closer to reality. The big breakthrough for artificial intelligence in recent months was the victory of machine over human in the ancient board game Go. AlphaGo, an AI-based computer developed by London-based Google DeepMind,1 challenged the world champion of the Chinese board game, Lee Sedol of South Korea, to a series of five games in which the machine defeated the human four to one. While AlphaGo deservedly captured headlines across the globe, the real breakthrough in artificial intelligence is not this singular event but the impressive advances artificial intelligence–based computer programs have made as a technology, to the point that they can learn and intelligently respond across a wide range of problem domains. AI-based applications today have already touched people’s lives in ways that are often not fully perceived or fathomed. Until now, this subtle proliferation of AI technology has been driven largely by the private sector and has been focused primarily on consumer goods. The technology, however, is of such great potential and importance that its development and implementation cannot be left solely to a few Silicon Valley corporations and their distributors: the emergent scale and implications of AI’s applications make it imperative for policymakers in government to take notice.2