Gen AI relatively new; fine balance must be struck between innovation, regulation: Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

Generative AI is a relatively new phenomenon, and a fine balance must be struck between innovation and regulation to safeguard social structures and ensure progress, Union Minister for Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a seminar by Women Journalist Welfare Trust, the minister said while technology and AI are making lives easier with transformative powers, if left without safeguards they also pose a downside risk to age-old established structures, and hence a new set of regulations and legislations are required.

"There is a very risky side, which is affecting our society, democracy, and many of the social structures that were meticulously built over decades and centuries.

Many of the institutions that were meant to protect society and make sure that we all live in a harmonious way are under attack," he said.

The minister said despite existing in the industrial world for three decades, AI as a generative AI, that can be used by a normal user, is a new thing.

AI to create things which were normally associated with human creativity, was a totally new phenomenon, and this created a new challenge, he said.

"We must come out with some consensus on the way forward by which society can proceed. We, in India, believe that we must have a fine balance of innovation and regulation.

"We must have a very consultative process through which we come out with the final policy. We must make sure that every stakeholder's voice is heard, understood, and properly well-analysed," he said.

With the advent of social media, he said "connectivity became ubiquitous, everybody had a mobile phone, and everybody started having good data connectivity".

"One of the ministers responsible for this subject in Europe told me that the institutions that were built over 400 years ago are getting destroyed by social media," Vaishnaw said.

The minister said a significant reduction was witnessed in the price of computing, connectivity, and sensors. But it made the internet highly accessible to everybody, he said.

The internet in a sense, exploded. It became very easy for anybody to post anything, then it started creating social tensions, Vaishnaw said.

He said the old structure was a safe harbor structure, where to promote innovation in the internet, liability was never kept up on the internet service provider.

In the new structure, he said, there are millions of people posting millions of things on the internet. "The question is, whose liability should it be? That's the fundamental question." Vaishnaw further said societies across the world, including the most liberal, market-oriented, socialist, as well as the most state-controlled countries, are debating the issue.

"Everywhere the same question is being asked: what should be the new regulatory regime for social media platforms, and who should take the liability? Where should the accountability be? Who should be responsible for what is published on the social media platform? "We have to find a solution, we have to come up with a proper balance. And we have to make sure that our social structures our society, and the way we want to move forward are properly protected," he said.