Need to maintain balance between innovation and regulation: Vaishnaw

New Delhi: Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday underlined the need to strike a balance between development of artificial intelligence and regulation, and asserted that govt will use a mix of technical regulations and laws going forward.

"India's approach has been a techno-legal approach, a combination of using technical solutions, and legal structures. That approach is now appreciated by the global community. Some geographies have in the past used only regulation or a legal approach. That has not really delivered the kind of results which are needed," the minister told TOI in an interview.

Given that innovations have a long runway, heavy regulation may not be required at this stage. "This is probably the first innings of the first match of a test series," he quipped.

The minister said Big Tech "is pretty much working in sync" with society and policymakers.

Asked about restricting access of children to social media, Vaishnaw said that currently discussions are underway. "There is a discussion going on about the impact of social media on children and how it should be dealt with. Several countries have imposed restrictions and prohibitions and in India too, industry and public other stakeholders are discussing the issue. The right solution will emerge only through thoughtful deliberation."

He also said that AI offered a lot of opportunities for Indian IT companies.

"The IT industry is also very cognizant of the challenges and they are pivoting very rapidly away from the old model to create a new model of providing services, from software as a service to AI-based services. There are thousands and thousands of legacy systems in the world. Those legacy systems will have to be modernised, and our IT services companies are best placed to modernise them, using the new AI-based solutions," Vaishnaw said, adding that the govt, academia and industry are harmonised.

Asked about the PM's comments asking IT companies to diversify beyond services to products and platforms, the minister said industry is calibrating these changes. "They were trying to measure what this change would bring to their sector... Lots and lots of very focused, small models is what the IT industry is putting their emphasis on, which can be placed in an enterprise where trust is the most important factor," he said.

Vaishnaw added that the IT industry has devised a bouquet of small models, and our sovereign models are complementing that.

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