Humans Need To Safeguard Themselves From Risk Related To AI: Niti Aayog Member

Reminding the words of physicist Stephen Hawking that the development of full artificial intelligence 'could spell the end of the human race', Niti Aayog member VK Saraswat on Friday appealed for caution in the development of the next generation technology.

While speaking at International Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2023, Saraswat shared the benefits and value addition that it can do to the economies but at the same time charted out a list of checks and balances that need to be put in place in the development of artificial intelligence.

"We should not forget what Stephen Hawking, the physicist, said. The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Once humans develop artificial intelligence it will take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans who are limited by slow biological evolution could not compete and would be superseded. Now we have to safeguard ourselves against that," Saraswat said.

He said that artificial intelligence is estimated to contribute $1 trillion to the Indian economy by 2035 but it will have a lot of impact on society at the same time.

"Artificial Intelligence has a potential to add almost about 1 trillion to India's economy in 2035...the augmentation will be highest about $597 billion. The intelligence automation will be another one which will be $277 billion and of course, total factor productivity as we improve is about $83 billion and all this will happen through Intelligent Automation human-machine interface and productivity improvement," Saraswat said.

He said there are risk factors which are associated with artificial intelligence and many tend to overlook those risk factors.

"If you take a societal risk, risk of automation, weapons proliferation is what we are talking of. We have the risk of intelligence divide. This may happen. Performance risks are in the terms of risk of errors, risk of bias risk of opaqueness," he said.

IBM India and South Asia Managing Director Sandeep Patel said that challenge before India at present is towards scaling artificial intelligence responsibly.

"Continued focus on artificial intelligence education and skilling is essential to take advantage of our digital infrastructure. This will not not only increase employability but also unlock innovation potential", Patel said.

He said that data is a very important component that shapes artificial intelligence.

"Humans and machine data are getting generated everyday and artificial intelligence is the only way to process this enormous amount of data", Patel said.