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In the Interim Budget 2019, interim Finance Minister Piyush Goyal proposed a National Programme on Artificial Intelligence with an aim to “take the benefits of AI and related technologies to the people”. To enhance the process, the Centre will form a National Centre on Artificial Intelligence as a hub along with Centres of Excellence. Goyal has said the government has identified nine priority areas in this regard, even though he didn’t shed much light on the details, and announced that a National Artificial Intelligence portal will come up soon. NITI Aayog will oversee the implementation of these programmes. On the face of it, the proposals look good. But if you take a closer look at the way new technologies are emerging across the globe and how countries such as India are adopting and benefiting from their applications in various sectors, it is a tad disappointing that the Budget, despite the election year compulsions, did not announce any significant plans to tap the potential of digital technologies.
Considering that the government had set up an AI Task Force under V Kamakoti of IIT Madras sometime back, which submitted its report to the Centre in June last year, and that already over 1,500 start-ups already operate in areas such as AI and Big Data, the government should have announced more policy incentives for the digital technology space. It appears the recommendations of the Task Force were ignored by the Budget. One of the key suggestions of the task force, to see AI as a scalable problem solver rather than only as a booster of economic growth, sits well with the government’s ambitious goal to create 1 lakh digital villages in the next five years.Still, it is surprising that the government didn’t allocate significant funds to promote research and innovation in the digital economy, which is expected to reach $1 trillion in size, given the explosion in sectors such as e-commerce and mobile telephony. It can create millions of jobs in machine learning, data technologies and fintech.
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