Decoding How Communication, Intelligent Systems Shaping Tomorrow
Mckinsey, in a recent study, estimates that 70 per cent of the rate of growth in India in the next few years, will come from the digital economy. According to the agency, this could raise the poverty line benchmark from USD 2.6 to 12 per day, almost a five-fold increase. The two buzzwords for this kind of digital revolution are disruptive technology and customised learning.
Nasscom also estimates that the Information Technology Industry in India (IT and ITeS) together will generate a revenue of about USD 500 billion by 2029-30, as against USD 180 billion today with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8 to 10 per cent. India is the fastest-growing market for Microsoft Github with 13.2 million developers using it and by 2027, it may cross the number of such users in the US which stands at 20 million.
The momentum of India's developers is termed unstoppable and unbelievable by the chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft. India has fully developed 16 digital public goods (DPGs) and 22 have been partially developed in the country. Further, 54 DPGs have been deployed in India at different scales of operation.
The hectic digitisation in India is causing havoc through cybercrime, with seven million cyber attacks encountered daily through the internet, telecom equipment and mobile apps. Two cyber security institutions are the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and the National Critical Information and Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC). International Cyber Crime is being handled through a coordination centre created in 2018 with a network detection and response and monitoring network, including cyber cable, sea cable and satellites.
This is important for the protection of banks, telecom operators and government institutions. The Telecommunications Bill 2023 has made cyber attacks or any unauthorized access to any telecom network, punishable with imprisonment of three years, a fine of Rs 2 crores or a combination of both.
The government is alert to future disruptions in technology and has established 14 science and technology parks and 24 technology business incubators. The National Research Foundation is being set up under NEP, as India crosses 3000 startups in deep tech. Research parks have been set up in the IITs of Chennai, Mumbai, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Guwahati, Hyderabad and Gandhinagar along with the India Institute of Science (IISC) in Bengaluru.
NVIDIA, a US-based manufacturer of graphics processing units (GPUs), which enable generative AI software to function, is playing a crucial role and training 50,000 employees in AI in Infosys. The task ahead is large as India’s total tech force is 5.4 million. NVIDIA is valued at USD 2.3 trillion today.
Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company, which builds most of the GPUs designed by NVIDIA is a USD 1.5 trillion company. Dutch company ASML which creates nano meter-long silicon wafers used in AI models, is a USD 370 billion company.
Communication
This sector has grown by leaps and bounds with the broadband user base reaching 840 million. 5G spread has been fastest in India globally with 100 million users in 738 out of 766 districts of India. 5G subscriptions, at the present speed, may touch 860 million by 2030. At present, there are 500 million internet subscribers, 1.3 billion Aadhar card holders and 1.2 billion cell phone users, leading the communication charge, and making India proud in the process.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data indicates that 8.7 million POS terminals and more than 300 million QR codes exist in India. UPI transactions, which are an excellent indicator of fast communication, crossed 100 billion by 2023 encompassing 182 lakh crore of value. Over 7.3 billion merchant payments were reported in March 2024 in UPI.
Electronic manufacturing has picked up substantially and from being a net importer, India is poised to touch a domestic turnover of USD 300 million by 2030. Cell phone exports crossed USD 11 billion last year with Apple alone contributing USD 5 billion from India, indicating a drastic change from all cell phone imports a few years ago. About 125 out of Fortune 500 companies have set up their Global capability centres (GCC) in India. 19 have been set up in the last 6 months. These are offshore development centres with end-to-end solutions.
Another significant development in the area of communication has been the T+0 settlement started by Sebi in the last week of March 2024 enabling all stock purchases to be credited in the customer’s account the same day, simultaneously debiting his bank account. The number of Demat accounts today has touched 150 million, almost quadrupling from 40 million in March 2020, indicating the volume of transactions being done on the stock exchanges.
A simple indication of this is systematic investment plan inflows, which have jumped two and half times from Rs 8,000 crore five years ago to Rs 19,000 crore now. No wonder the explosion in the players has led to the doubling of Sensex to Rs 75,000 in less than five years.
The Telecommunications Bill 2023, which will replace three archaic laws, namely the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, The Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933 and the Telegraph Wires (Unlawful Possession) Act, 1950 is said to be a forerunner in coverage of all aspects relating to telecommunication activity in India. In an emergency, the law can take over the telecom network or service. It guards consumers against spam calls or messages by providing heavy penalties. It will regulate carrier services offered by Telecom operators and internet service providers.
The definition of telecommunication has been kept general to enable wider interpretation. Also, 19 services have been listed in the first schedule, where spectrum can be given administratively, including national security, defence, disaster management etc. Apart from the first schedule, all spectrums would be auctioned.
For the first time in India, to track the movement of all goods in India, trucks, tractors and air couriers, the National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (NICDC) is developing a single app to take care of all multi-modal transport. The intention is to bring down the logistics cost from 8-9% to 5-6% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
This will facilitate the communication of cargo across land, sea, rail and air.
India’s space policy 2023, allows low earth orbit and medium earth orbit satellite operators to launch fast broadbands from space, after seeking approval from an autonomous central regulatory authority called IN-SPACe. Allocation of satellite spectrum opens up huge potential of reaching every corner of India, with mobile and broadband connectivity, quick and from space, the type that Elon Musk has mastered.
Intelligent System/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Technology is developing so fast that venture capital firms “are not sure why they are investing and where they are investing”. This is testimony to the fact that AI in the last year has revolutionised the world of technology like never before. Experts believe that AI can contribute closer to USD 15 trillion to the global economy if biases and toxicity from data can be avoided. Corpus is a new concept which talks about capturing all data around us, be it the written word, physical images, sounds and gestures. This is both intriguing and horrifying as it implies that everything in the atmosphere constitutes data and that, data is the new oil.
Ernst and Young estimate that generative AI can alone contribute USD 1 trillion to India’s GDP by 2030. The USA has captured 40 per cent of the AI market already, while China accounts for 31 per cent, France and UAE 9 per cent each and Japan and the UK 4 per cent each. Tiny Singapore has created its own LLM model, adaptable to five languages spoken there.
All progressive companies in India are working towards adapting and adopting AI to maximise productivity. The government is setting up three centres of excellence shortly for AI and all new intelligent systems like blockchain, machine learning, virtual reality, augmented reality and robotics. The national programme on AI focuses on skill development to enable tapping AI’s full potential and ensuring ethical and responsible AI adoption.
Some of the important use cases in India enunciated by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) recently, include Bhashini, which develops machine translation of different Indian languages and already through the PM Kisaan chatbot this has reached 110 million farmers catering to their linguistic diversity and informing them about their different entitlements. Cotton Ace is an app developed for farmers giving them advice on the timing for spraying pesticides, it is available in 8 Indian languages, helping 18 thousand farmers and increasing cotton crop yield by 25 per cent.
The Sowing App has been developed by ICRISAT which relies on 45 years of rainfall data and informs farmers about the exact appropriate week for sowing the crop. Urbania taps into the data available with municipalities and uses it for better traffic and city infrastructure monitoring. iRaste is an app in the pilot phase which analyses data and throws up locations prone to frequent accidents. ATMAN is an app developed by DRDO to classify chest X-rays and specify those that fall in the pneumonia category.
Dozee, application was developed by the biotechnology department and provides an early warning system for monitoring a patient’s vital organ data. Rabbit is a US-based startup which has created a Large Action Model (LAM) powered device under USD 200 which will enable AI-made choices, obviating the need for multiple apps. It can understand and predict what action should be taken based on a request. It is like a co-pilot or an AI agent, who can carry out specific tasks.
AI can be a darling or a devil. The US’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre had already developed global guidelines to make AI secure by design. 18 countries last month endorsed these global guidelines for secure AI system development, deployment, operation and maintenance of AI systems.
About 17 other countries are going to follow suit to mitigate AI risks including data privacy and security. This shows a global commitment to making AI secure by design. India too has supported the ethical development of AI by increasing transparency and focusing on human and democratic values, while assessing the applications of AI across different fields.
The Government of India wants to ensure that AI policies must be flexible as one size does not fit all. Yet, there should be no bias or discrimination in the use of data, and hence standards of platform design through transparent means are imperative.
The government has issued an advisory on 15 March 2024 for adopting watermarking technologies like open protocols to identify which users or systems on platforms are making any changes in any content. An independent regulator to promote transparency, accountability and consumer redressal forums, is the need of the hour in India. Stakeholder consultation and measures to handle deepfakes are essential in diverse India.
The US and UK are setting up AI safety institutes to control unintended consequences, so India should do a similar exercise. Some AI uses will remain banned as the risks are unacceptable, like predicting human behaviour, predictive policing and emotion recognition systems in schools and workplaces.
About 29 member countries of Global Partnerships on Artificial Intelligence (GPIA) led by India, have agreed to promote collaborative effort in utilising AI for creating applications in healthcare, agriculture and other areas by a safe, trusted, open and accountable process. This shows India’s leadership in the Global South, but we still have a long way to go to attain AI leadership.
Computing
The National Quantum Mission has been set up to give a quantum leap to India’s technological progress. 150 researchers are setting up thematic hubs in 40 identified leading institutes of the country. The government is thinking of creating a 10,000 crore fund to set up supercomputing and quantum computing hubs in PPP mode.
This would be a plug-and-play facility for high-performing computing required by high-tech startups and MSMEs who can take computing facilities, on a lease, so to speak. Quantum computing draws on the laws of quantum mechanics to do complex computations at speeds which classical computers cannot match. In fields like cryptography, drug discovery and optimisation, high-speed computing is essential and was hitherto unavailable.
Computing is becoming a critical driving force shaping our society, explains my semi-conductor expert friend Anurag Mittal. Intelligent computing is creating the digital revolution. Recent advances in computing involve neural networks, edge computing and heterogeneous integration.
Edge computing involves local processing of data at the network’s edge on its own or with the help of a nearby server. While this makes real-time decision-making faster and allows leveraging 5G networks, it has its vulnerabilities which need to be appreciated and acted upon.
Bio-computing enables understanding of our mind and biology to improve cognitive understanding, reasoning and learning abilities and greater adaptability. Another common term is high-performance computing or HPC, which allows for analysing large amounts of data to gain appropriate insights. Cloud computing enables organizations to deploy HPC.
Based on my 44 years of experience, I find that intelligent systems will play the most significant roles in the areas of future demand, emerging from better design thinking and generative AI use cases, which appear to have the maximum scope and impact in the education sector, and the sharply growing media and entertainment sector, as leisure gets a premium in our society.
About 70 per cent of India’s 31,000 tech startups are using AI to augment their productivity. AI and space research have been the hottest topics in the press in the last year. We have 25 National Science Centres catering to the public and I suggest they should be directed to create a video of one hour each on these subjects, for dissemination to a large public, to whet their curiosity.
I also suggest that Niti Aayog empanels quality firms dealing with AI, so that anyone desiring AI help in use cases dear to them, can tap from the empanelled firms without having to do a double check or due diligence. AI has the largest possible impact on education and hence I have suggested that the UPSC board meets and resolves all likely dangers of AI disrupting a merit-based exam system.
Directions From The Board Will Help In This Regard Namely:
No question in any exam should be repeated because AI can predict possible questions.
No cell phone should be allowed in any exam hall, with multiple checks to be done meticulously for this purpose.
As fast as possible, facial recognition technology devices should be fixed outside every exam hall, which can read the admit card and allow only legitimate candidates.
Finally, if students still manage to use ChatGPT in the exam hall, the examiners must be enabled to smell the rat and take necessary actions accordingly, while evaluating the scripts. Caution and precaution are the two steps that will prevent the misuse of AI.
