“We need to make AI in India and AI work for India”
– Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his vision of ‘AI for All.’
India’s foray into the realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been envisioned as an umbrella programme by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for leveraging transformative technologies to foster inclusion, innovation and adoption for social Impact.
For the past 10 years, the government of India has encouraged the development of AI-based solutions to address the problems faced by the common man. These include AI solutions that can help in early detection of diseases, increase agricultural productivity, and promote linguistic diversity.
AI in Agriculture
India’s agriculture sector sustains the livelihoods of millions while facing significant challenges. With a vast and diverse landscape, varying climate conditions, and a predominantly smallholder farming model, Indian agriculture encounters issues such as yield variability, resource inefficiency, and post-harvest losses. However, the introduction of AI-led technologies holds immense promise to revolutionize this sector.
By leveraging AI’s capabilities in data analysis, predictive modelling, and precision farming, Indian farmers can gain insights into localized weather patterns, optimal planting times, and resource allocation, leading to improved crop yields and reduced waste. AI-powered solutions can help address these longstanding challenges, enhancing the sustainability and productivity of Indian agriculture while ensuring food security for its growing population.
Artificial Intelligence is poised to drive a transformative shift in agriculture, fostering innovation and sustainable development. The agricultural sector is expected to be the second major segment by 2025. Niti Aayog has adopted the nurturing of AI ecosystem in India and welcomed a theme of ‘AI for all’.
Pune-based agritech startup Farmpal has designed an AI solution to predict demand and matching farmers supply data to keep wastage below 5 per cent. According to the company, “Post-harvest supply chain is currently completely unorganised, which is causing wastage of about 30-40 per cent of the farm produce. One of the major reasons is that the stakeholders do not have data on the demand and supply. The biggest challenge is predicting consumer demand and matching available supply, so there is no over- or under-supply, resulting in minimum wastage across the value chain.”
“AI modules help us to understand weekly demand for more than 50 stock-keeping units. This helps us to inform demand to the farmers a week before, and farmers can plan harvesting based on the demand to avoid over- as well as under-supply. Thus, we can sell at about 95 per cent accuracy and in turn, lower the wastage to less than 5 per cent across the value chain,” claims the company.
Through precision agriculture, resource optimization, supply chain enhancement, and empowerment of smallholder farmers, AI is addressing challenges that have persisted for generations. As the world’s population continues to grow, harnessing the power of AI in agriculture becomes more imperative than ever before. By embracing AI-driven solutions, the agricultural sector can pave the way for a future where food security is assured, resources are conserved, and rural economies thrive.
AI in Healthcare
In India, a shortage of more than 100,000 eye doctors, and the fact that only 6 million out of 72 million people with diabetes are screened for diabetic eye disease, mean that many individuals go undiagnosed and untreated.
Google and Verily—Alphabet’s life sciences and healthcare arm—have developed a machine learning algorithm to make it easier to screen for the disease, as well as expand access to screening for Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) and Diabetic Macular Edema (DME)—two of the leading causes of preventable blindness in adults). The first real world clinical use of the algorithm was done at the Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India.
Recently, AI was used by doctors for knee replacement surgery in Peerless Hospital, Kolkata. Dr Sudipta Mukherjee, a senior physician in the orthopaedics and traumatology department of the hospital, and an orthopaedic surgeon, outlined its benefits over the current approaches. “In the conventional method of knee surgery, the doctor replaces a joint with an artificial implant with surgical instruments. The entire process is manual and thus, prone to human errors,” he stated.
Image Courtesy: Peerless Hospital
In the AI-based system for knee replacement surgery, CT scan of a patient’s damaged joint and leg is sent into the HoloLens augmented reality system. A computer programme assists in determining the patient’s proper alignment. Throughout the procedure, the surgeon wears HoloLens. Without using the robotic arm, the surgeon can confirm the incisions and attain the appropriate alignment. “The surgeon wears the HoloLens. It enables the surgeon to see the entire limb. Earlier, during knee replacement, we could only see the front portion of the knee. There was no vision of the hip, ankle or leg. The new system provides a holographic image generated by AI that gives the surgeon a much better and holistic view of the entire limb,” stated Mukherjee.
Image Courtesy: Shutterstock
Another benefit of the new technology, explained by Dr Somnath De, the hospital’s clinical director and senior orthopaedic surgeon, is: “The technology helps achieve personalised alignment with the freedom to use the implant best suited for that patient. Robotic surgery, however, allows only specific implants that match the particular robotic make.” The new AI-based method is said to be less expensive than robotic surgery, since a typical robotic arm costs around Rs 6 crore, while a HoloLens costs Rs 20 lakh.
AI in Fintech
The collaboration between the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) and Digital India Bhashini Division (DIBD) aims at breaking down the language barriers prevalent in the financial services landscape. This collaboration arises against the backdrop of a transforming fintech sector, driven by increased smartphone penetration and reduced data usage costs. As a significant initial step, Bhashini plans to launch a Public Tech Platform for Frictionless Credit in multiple languages. This platform aims to streamline and enhance credit delivery by financial institutions, contributing significantly to greater financial inclusion.
While these advancements have propelled the country’s financial inclusion endeavours, specific sectors and segments of the population remain on the fringes of the formal financial sector. This collaboration signifies a pivotal stride toward integrating them into the established financial ecosystem.
AI for Youth
PAiGPT is India’s first AI-powered conversational chatbot for UPSC aspirants. The bot is now available on Android and iOS. The app aims to revolutionise the aspirants’ research and learning experience for the government exam.
PAiGPT was developed by Pinak Ai, a bootstrapped Indian company harnessing the power of generative AI and democraticising technology for non-urban areas. PAiGPT is seamless and affordable for everyone. The app can fetch real-time information on various topics and current affairs. Though the app’s functioning is similar to Perplexity AI and Google Gemini, PAiGPT’s ability to provide trending topics and the option to create multiple-choice questions based on the available information makes it relevant for UPSC aspirants. Students can even upload images of editorials from popular newspapers, and the app can generate summaries.
The developers are also planning to introduce a feature that will allow the app to generate summaries in Hindi, even if the uploaded image contains text in English.
AI Ecosystem in India
India’s AI mission aims not only to foster innovation but also to safeguard the sovereignty of Indian data. Due to the limited availability of GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) domestically, many companies have resorted to accessing cloud resources located abroad.
In March, the Government of India approved budget of Rs 10,372-crore for India’s AI Mission with an aim to deploy 10,000 GPUs through public-private partnerships. Under the rent-and-sublet model, the government plans to provide GPUs to qualifying startups, researchers, and others on a concession basis.
Alternatively, a marketplace model is being considered, where performance can be objectively measured, and incentives distributed accordingly, similar to a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme.
The scarcity and high cost of GPUs have made acquiring them a significant challenge for companies, especially startups in India. Typically, NVIDIA’s H100 GPUs would go for about $50,000 a piece, whereas its more recent Blackwell cards go for about $40,000.
Image Courtesy: Internet
Even for the most basic AI data centre that is only capable of running existing AI models, requirement would be 100 to 300 GPUs. For any meaningful computing capability that could be used to create, develop and train large language models, requirement would be 5000-10,000 GPUs.
So, the government of India is exploring potential partnership with chip-making giant NVIDIA to procure GPUs and NPUs (Neural Processing Units) and offer them at subsidised rates to local startups, researchers, academic institutions, and other users in a bid to boost the AI infrastructure in India.
AIRAWAT, the AI Supercomputer of India, which is located at CDAC in Pune, was ranked 75th among the top 500 supercomputers of the world. This ranking was announced at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) 2023 held in Germany.
The government of India has implemented several programs to enable students at different levels to learn AI skills. The New Education Policy (NEP) is a game changer in adopting new technologies like AI in our education system and also building capability in AI at all levels of education across the country.
*The writer has 37 years’ experience in the fields of global AI and Cyber Security. He is a science and technology writer with more than 4000 published articles to his credit. He can be reached at upuranik@gmail.com.
