India's DPI success, tech talent pool boost AI prospects: Senior Wipro exec

India has promising potential on AI given its proven success in scalable digital infrastructure, vast talent pool, and robust legal framework, making the nation a great partner for organisations globally in the Artificial Intelligence space, Ivana Bartoletti, Global Chief Privacy and AI Governance Officer at Wipro, said on Monday.

Wipro, she said, takes AI governance and responsibility "really seriously", and the approach of putting ethics first is rooted deeply in the company's values, she said.

"India has fantastic potential. The major advantage is the scalability you (India) have demonstrated with digital public infrastructure, including UPI... of showing technological delivery at scale. This is really important because the big challenge with artificial intelligence is deployment at scale," she told PTI on the sidelines of India AI Impact Summit.

 

She also highlighted India's tech edge in terms of the vast talent pool, and said it placed the country in a good position to compete globally on AI.

"And at the same time, the techno-legal approach, coupled with other elements, like legal certainty, the rule of law. They make India a great partner for organisations worldwide to create AI with," she said.

Bartoletti noted AI is bringing enormous advantages, and cited its transformative outcomes from advanced medical diagnostics to inclusive tools, helping children with disabilities learn and navigate.

"But at the same time, over the last few years, we've also seen the risks, and people have seen these risks. We've seen, for example, artificial intelligence used to create synthetic images and disinformation; we've seen artificial intelligence used to divide people and create echo chambers online.

"So, we have seen the negative side of all this. This is why a lot of countries around the world have equipped themselves with strategies to harness the value of AI while mitigating the risks," she said, adding that this is not an easy task given the rapid pace of AI evolution.

Going forward, AI governance would be important, she pointed out.

"So...governance is the key point of all this, how we are really able to harness existing legislation, produce new guidelines and new soft law, hard law, when we need it...asking companies to really embed privacy, security and resilience and legal protection in the design," she added.