Indian Govt Mulls Setting Up An Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute

New Delhi: Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most hotly-debated contemporary topics.

Is it good for human civilisation? Or are the potential levels it can achieve capable of outweighing the positives?

India, driven by Central government initiatives, corporate investments, and a large, skilled youth population, is emerging as a global AI leader.

So it’s only apt that the government is planning to set up an Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (AISI) that will look to help set proper standards, frameworks and guidelines for AI development without acting as a regulatory body or stifling innovation, Hindustan Times reported.

Six people aware of the matter told HT that top government officials conveyed to stakeholders about the proposed AISI in a consultation meeting on October 7.

The preliminary meeting, chaired by Union Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) additional secretary Abhishek Singh sought to get inputs on how the Indian AISI should be structured, what its mandate should be, and how it could work with other such safety institutes across the world.

MeitY shared two categories of questions with stakeholders – companies like Meta, Google, Microsoft, IBM and OpenAI; industry bodies such as Nasscom, Broadband India Forum, BSA-The Software Alliance; multiple IITs; consulting firms such as The Quantum Hub and Dialogue; civil society organisations like Digital Empowerment Foundation and Access Now – before the meeting.

According to HT report, the first category of questions centred around AISI’s focus –- its core objectives, the organisational structure best suited for its mission and scalability, how it could develop indigenous AI safety tools “that are contextualized to India’s unique challenges”, and who should be the AISI’s strategic partners.

The other questions focused on how AISI could develop “strong partnerships and gain stakeholder support.”

The first country to set up an AISI was the UK last November, with an initial investment of £100 million (around Rs 1,100 crore). The USA followed suit as part of its National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), before Japan launched its AISI in February 2024.

In May this year, the European Union and 11 other nations — the USA, the UK, South Korea, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Singapore — signed the Seoul Declaration at the Seoul Summit. The Seoul Declaration agreed to create or expand AISIs, organise research programmes and other relevant institutions to promote cooperation on safety research and share best practices.