The world is waking up everyday to discover newer possibilities of Artificial Intelligence, and India is at the forefront of this technological churn, ready to be the harbinger of ethical AI usage and use of the technology for the better of mankind. Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar talked about the now and future of India’s digital leadership journey and how the government is taking AI to the masses in an exclusive chat with WION's Vikram Chandra. 

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The Minister reminded of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's idea that India's AI will be developed in India around Indian user case, to say that the Indian datasets under development are one of world's most bias-free datasets and the country will lead the global race as far as shaping the future of AI is concerned. "India will be a significant pole in the universe of the AI going forward. I understand we are at very early days of AI. Chat GPT is certainly AI, but it's certainly not all things AI. It is an indicator in my opinion — a marker in the ground — that indicates to the rest of the world that this is the potential power of AI if harnessed right. We are, with our India AI policy, assembling what is going to be one of the world's highest quality and most diverse datasets programs," he informed.

Talking about Government of India's take on the AI revolution vis-a-vis USA and China (who are at the forefront of AI development), he stated, "Bias is a very important problem to be addressed in AI — and Chat GPT proves that occasionally. One of the things that we are doing is to position our datasets program as one of the most bias-free datasets in the world, (and) most diverse. So I have absolutely no doubt in my mind for all the medals being handed out to the US and China. I think we are at the beginning of the race today. We are certainly at the starting line and I don't want to say we will lead the world, but certainly we will be the leading pack in terms of shaping the future of AI, applications, use cases of the AI that will benefit citizens."

Talking about India's crackdown on cryptocurrency and the move being perceived by some as means of regulation, the Minister clarified that the Government doesn't have a problem with Blockchain technology per se, but it certainly is averse to the technology being used as means to con the citizens of India by cryptocurrencies — which he calls "mismanaged Ponzi schemes". He informed, "Crypto (issue) is not a regulation of technology at all. We have said very clearly that on Web3 and all things Blockchain, we are completely invested in India leading the charge. Crypto is an issue that has to do with macroeconomics and about financial regulation."

Throwing light on the way the RBI perceived the issue, and tackled it, he added, "The RBI has a problem with something that is floating around, in a tokenized form, that is not accountable to anything or anybody. And you've seen the meltdown of FTX, that at the end of the day, most of these cryptos pretend to be innovations, but essentially, in a lot of ways they are totally undermanaged or mismanaged Ponzi schemes. So certainly for the Reserve Bank of India and the Government of India (in the name of innovation, and in the name of advances in technology), we can't have people of India or the citizens of India being gamed and losing money."

Talking about the steps taken to regulate Indian investments in cryptos, he further informed, "We have stepped in and said that if an Indian citizen wants to invest in crypto, he has to go through FEMA. He has to buy the dollars that he uses to buy the crypto through the Liberalised Remittance Scheme  (LRS) of the RBI. But if somebody thinks that he can exchange rupees for cryptos, then he's violating more than half of the laws, including, but not limited to, FEMA." 

Talking about the electronics and manufacturing front, the Minister informed that in 2014 the Indian electronic production industry was only worth approximately Rs 1 lakh crores, and by 2025-2026, this will have risen to around Rs 24 lakh crores — a 24-time-jump in a decade. "In 2014, almost 82% of mobile phones consumed in India were imported. And in 2022, 100% of the mobile phones are assembled and made in India. In 2014, we were exporting zero, and in 2022 we are exporting about Rs 85,000 to Rs 90,000 crores of mobile phones - Apple and Samsung. And next year we expect mobile phone exports to be in the top ten exports of India and crossing Rs one lakh crores. So in electronics manufacturing, we have gone from being a nobody in 2014 and a totally devastated electronics ecosystem to being today a country which has reasonable ambitions of being a significant player in the changing electronic devices global value chains post Covid," he summed up.