India’s government has put together governance guidelines for artificial intelligence (AI), a “framework to ensure safe, inclusive and responsible AI adoption across sectors.” Its guiding principle, as stated at the unveiling event, echoes the Hippocratic oath of medicine: Do no harm.
While its details will need to be pored over, its outline is reassuring. It lays out a set of ethical principles, while offering cues for AI governance, an action plan, and some notes for industry, developers and regulators aimed at transparency and accountability in the use of AI.
Notably, the ministry highlighted its effort to balance safety norms with space for AI innovation. Among other things, the framework calls for AI to empower people, reflect their values and stay human-centric; humans should, “as far as possible, have final control over AI systems.”
Such systems should not just be “understandable” enough for regulators to grasp, they must always be fair and unbiased, with their makers ready to redress grievances.
Welcome as all this is, our big challenge would be to use our leverage as a user base to get the global movers and shakers of AI to comply. For this, diplomacy will need to chip in.