Catering to a fast-emerging area, researchers have established a center to ensure ethical and responsible development of Artificial Intelligence based solutions, contributions for which have been made by Google as well.

Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) has established a Centre for Responsible AI (CeRAI), an interdisciplinary research centre with the vision.

Google is the first platinum consortium member and has contributed a sum of US$ 1 Million for this Centre.

The Centre for Responsible AI conducted its first workshop on ‘Responsible AI for India’ today (15th May 2023).

Abhishek Singh, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Digital India Corporation, said, “AI is playing a major role in all our lives. Whether we know or not, every day we are using AI-based technologies in some part of our life. It is very important that those at the policymaking level and those who are working at the cutting-edge of developing technologies are aware of the risks and challenges that remain while we are using the same technologies for solving societal problems, ensuring access to healthcare, making healthcare more affordable and making education more inclusive and making agriculture more productive… There is a need for non-biased and non-discriminatory AI framework as we have unique requirements that require customization as per our requirements.”

Among he primary objectives are producing high-quality research outputs, such as publishing research articles in high-impact journals/conferences, white papers, and patents, among others. It will work towards creating technical resources such as curated datasets (universal as well as India-specific), software, toolkits, etc., with respect to the domain of Responsible AI.

Sanjay Gupta, Google’s Country Head and Vice President, India, said, “As India’s digital ecosystems increasingly adopt and leverage AI, we are committed to sharing the best practices we have been developing since 2018 when we began championing responsible AI. To help build a foundation of fairness, interpretability, privacy, and security, we are supporting the establishment of a first-of-its-kind multidisciplinary Center for Responsible AI with a grant of $1 million to the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.”

Prof V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “We have now reached a stage where we have to assign responsibility to AI tools and interpret the reasons for the output the AI gives. Aspects of human augmentation, biased data sets, risk of leakage of collected data and the introduction of new policies besides substantial research must be addressed. There is a growing need for trust to be built around AI and it is crucial to bring about the notion of privacy. AI will not take away jobs as long as domain interpretation exists.”