Tough AI regulation will impede innovations, investments in India: Meta

Any move to put in place tough regulation on artificial intelligence will impede innovations and throttle investments in India, a senior official at Meta said on Wednesday.

While speaking at the Global Technology Summit, Meta Vice President - Privacy Policy, Evelyn Miller said the European Union regulations have hit a stumbling block because the industry was not aware of the liability it will put on them and therefore, stalled innovation for the region.

"I think you have to be very careful when it comes to regulation, and the reason for that is we are not sure about what we are regulating. We don't know exactly what the potential of AI is right now.

"To create hard regulation today would impede all levels of innovation. Not only because there are so many different ways that you can innovate here on technologies that we are producing in different parts of the world but also because it doesn't allow for investments," Miller said.

She was responding to a question on the way regulation around AI should be shaped in India.

"If you have regulations, there is less desire to invest in innovations. Those are two solid reasons to hold back on regulations," she added.

She said there is a need to collaborate across different fora like it has been discussed during G7, in the OECD, and White House, among others.

"We need to look at all of those and find the threads that sort of run through all of them and bring to light the issues that really need to be addressed. I think, for the most part, people will focus on rightfully national security issues. These are the things that we need to worry about. We need to worry about protecting our sovereignty, making sure that we are secure," Miller noted.

She said regulations should not prevent the ability of a country like India to innovate in ways that benefit the poorest of the country and those who can't communicate.

Speaking in another session at the event, Flipkart Senior Vice President and Chief Data Scientist Mayur Datar said there are application interfaces available for AI that can be used by companies to go faster to the market but cautioned against getting "married to one idea".

He said that companies should build customised models and before that try to secure computer resources that one needs to play with this technology.