BS Manthan: AI tools need testing before social sector rollout, say experts

Standardised pedagogy required to scale AI-based solutions in India's health and education segments, they say

India will need to human-test artificial intelligence (AI) curriculum before straightaway deploying it for education and agriculture purposes, experts said here on Wednesday at Business Standard annual event Manthan 2026.

 

“The emphasis of putting AI in the hands of children and farmers without having human-tested the implications of this is something I am very concerned about,” said Vineet Nayar, founder and chairman of Sampark Foundation and former chief executive officer (CEO) of HCL.

 

From an AI point of view, Nayar said that while there are many good aspects, the technology also manipulates and lies.

 

“The impact of AI in front of a child without a governance layer and having not been human-tested is something we will feel a few years down the line,” he noted.

 

This comes as government education bodies, such as the Central Board of School Education (CBSE), have announced the introduction of AI curriculum in all schools from Class 3 onwards.

 

“While there is optimism in terms of what technology can bring, we need to be making sure that it is implemented with responsibility, especially when it comes to kids,” said Archana Vyas, country director-India for the Gates Foundation (formerly called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).

 

On the other hand, Ashish Dhawan, founder and CEO of The Convergence Foundation, said that the real opportunity of AI is reimagining the curriculum through hyper-personalisation of education for students.

 

“If you enter a classroom, you will see that there are students from five grade levels sitting in one room. This makes it very hard for teachers, who themselves often teach two grades at the same time,” he noted. He added that, through AI, every child will have access to a personal AI tutor.

 

Agreeing that India is still in the early days of AI, experts said there is a need for evidence and standards that could serve as a governance layer before scaling AI learning to any degree.

 

“This is a good time to tinker and come up with tools to pilot and build the evidence before it goes to scale,” Dhawan added.

 

With loss of learning outcomes being reported during the Covid-19 pandemic, experts believe that AI learning can address the last-mile connectivity issue that currently plagues India’s education system.

 

Quoting a “Bharat for EdTech” survey, Dhawan said over 90-plus per cent of Indian households have a smartphone while 57 per cent have two smartphones. “Two-thirds of children are actually using the phone for some form of learning,” he added.

 

While the primary use case is entertainment, he highlighted that students have now started to use smartphones to watch videos tied to their curriculum during the pandemic.

 

“Getting AI-literate, therefore, is important for their own safety as they will also become creators using AI tools as well. They need to know how to use these tools and be aware of the risks,” he said.

 

Giving an example of literacy tool Samarth AI launched by the Central Square Foundation, Dhawan added that the portal has worked on developing a curriculum that some states have now taken up.

 

“It was developed in collaboration with IIT Madras, and it majorly focuses on classes 6 to 12,” he said.

 

Experts believe that a standardised pedagogy is required to educate, train, and scale new AI-based solutions in India’s social sector segments like health, nutrition, and education.

 

The IT industry, Nayar said, scaled because of standardisation. “We need the same in health and education: a single, effective pedagogy and digital intervention, which is simplified for replication,” he added.

 

Dhawan said that India needs to over-invest in capital expenditure and provide stimulus to economic growth. He added that both public and private bodies are seeing an enhanced cooperation in making our social infrastructure future-ready.

 

“In the last decade, the government has been much more open to inviting partners from outside to work with them much more systemically,” he said.

 

However, the challenge with education and health, experts say, is much more complex. “It is not like stringing a wire, turning up from the power plant and getting electricity,” Dhawan highlighted.

 

With education, he elaborated, there needs to be a focus on recruitment of teachers, who then need to be trained to improve learning outcomes. “So, unless teaching and learning improve in the classroom, the indicators would not be good,” Dhawan said.

 

He added that recent trends have shown better performance by girls compared to boys in the education system, with women also having higher gross enrolment rates in colleges.

 

However, there are still large disparities in the participation of women and men in the workforce, he said.

 

“Women are only 18 per cent of the formal workforce. If you look at the top 2,000 companies in India, there are 12 million workers of which only 2 million are women,” he said.

 

According to data from the World Bank, India’s female labour-force participation rate was 33.23 per cent in 2023 while the same number for males stood at 80.9 per cent.

 

To try and solve this issue, Dhawan suggested establishing safe housing and safe transport to remove barriers for women in the workforce. He also stressed the need for better creche facilities to remove childcare restrictions for women.

 

“On the demand side, companies also need to have the belief that women can take on certain roles,” he said.

 

Vyas noted that women often get left behind in India’s aspiration to grow, and they do not have the digital access that men do. She said while a widening digital gap may exist, digital skills and AI could also be used to bridge the gender gap.

 

She added that most women work in the informal sector, and many are entrepreneurs, but the lack of availability of credit is often a problem. This could be solved using digital platforms, but women need to be trained to leverage it, she said.