India is at the cusp of AI innovation: Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani

Says govt's focus on setting up transaction systems over past few years has created huge data sets across systems

Non-executive Chairman of Infosys and Aadhaar architect Nandan Nilekani said that India is at the cusp of some major AI (artificial intelligence) innovation. Nilekani was talking at the fireside chat organised to celebrate the one-year anniversary of INDIAai--the national AI portal set up Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), National E-Governance Division, and Nasscom.

Nilekani said that the by-product of government's focus on setting up transaction systems over the past few years has been huge data sets across systems.

"The time is right to apply AI across the board to India's most challenging issues across areas like healthcare and education. Both the business side and the government side are well placed to apply AI in a unique  way," said Nilekani.

When asked when can India see a breakthrough application from AI as ubiquitous as Aadhaar or UPI, Nilekani said that the National Translation Mission, to translate Indian languages is a disruption from India in the language category.

"To my mind the work that Niti Ayog is doing on national translation mission is a huge disruption. India is a unique country where diverse set of languages are spoken, and everyone speaks at least 2-3 languages. I think India can show the world how well we can create such a platform," he added.

INDIAai has been created as a central knowledge repository of all things related to AI.

Ajay Sawhney, MeitY Secretary shared thatbthe single most important area to apply AI will be to improve services, and quality of decision making  for all stakeholders. One such instance he shared was the creation of national public digital platform for healthcare, which can knit together all healthcare providers on one platform.

"India's strength is its scale, not technology. Technology plays on top of scale," he added.