Partho Dasgupta Talks About How AI Could Pose A Threat To India

The artificial intelligence revolution today is taking over the world. The recent news of ‘Godfather of AI’ Jeoffrey Hinton leaving Google and claiming that the looming threat of AI is more urgent than climate change, has made everyone a bit uncomfortable and provided little solace. The launch of chat GPT, BARD and other tools can be said to be the turning point for the AI movement.

Automation has become a new trend. Most companies have started automating the repetitive tasks that were once done by humans. Customer service has been at the forefront of this change. It has been the most obviously seen change for the consumer as they get 24*7 service with chatbots to cater to their needs. “India needs to be proactive regarding AI and its potential threat” Partho Dasgupta.

As we use Insta, YouTube, and other apps, we can see the quality of filters and the ease with which these apps can predict the kind of content we are going to like. The algorithm predicts our choices.

“AI Anxiety is real. India as a country is going through a changing phase. With daily news of AI being able to ace top-level exams, taking over jobs, and making information readily available (though not fact-checked), India needs to seriously start working on ways to counter the threat that AI might pose” Shares Partho Dasgupta, Ex-CEO of BARC India and Presently Managing Partner, Thoth Advisors.

In a country like India where there is already so much misinformation to sift through, the added pressure of rising popularity and use of AI has become more prominent. The internet penetration in India is growing day by day and so is misinformation. The fact that AI mainly operates on the data that it is fed to it, makes it more difficult for people to understand that AI is not free of biases.

Privacy of data is another crucial point to take into consideration. Many apps that we download today use our data as we just casually check off the ‘terms and conditions’. As AI technology is in a nascent phase and still developing, it is very difficult to understand how it will shape up in the future. Italy has become the first country to ban Chat GPT in April this year over its concerns regarding the threat to privacy.

Partho Dasgupta says, “We must encourage Indian technical talent to come up with tools like Chat GPT and Bard or any other technology based service to counter threats. Indian engineers are working oversees to develop top notch services, same must be done in India.” China uses their own search engine ‘Baidu’ that controls 76% market share even South Korea has developed their own search engine. India has enough talent to develop AI software that can counter these threats by developing its own tech products. Instead of freely giving out data we can be the ones managing our own data.

There needs to be stricter law in place for companies like Meta and Alphabet that are running the internet. They need to have policies in place especially for countries like India which are huge markets for them. India today holds a lot of power over countries as we have the talent, resources, and market to lure any business.

With more than 800 million users of the internet, any business especially in the field of media and information needs to be monitored to ensure that misinformation is not spread. As India becomes the most connected country in the world in terms of internet usage, we need to educate people on how to use the internet safely. Only then can India battle against this looming threat.