India Wakes Up To Economic Transformation Through Artificial Intelligence

Even as artificial intelligence threatens to eat into 69% of its job market, India plans to introduce robotics in a big way in most of its industries in order to lend its products a competitive edge, in terms of pricing, in the global market.

New Delhi (Sputnik) — Indian government has constituted a task force on artificial intelligence (AI) to digitize big industries of the country. Task force comprises of experts, academics, researchers including state owned defense research institution DRDO and industry leaders. It will explore possibilities to leverage AI for development across various fields.

“With rapid development in the fields of information technology and hardware, the world is about to witness a fourth industrial revolution. Driven by the power of big data, high computing capacity, artificial intelligence and analytics, Industry 4.0 aims to digitize the manufacturing sector,” Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s Minister of Commerce & Industry said.

The task force will also delve into the possibility of job loss due to increased use of AI as creation of jobs; with unemployment growing at the rate of over seven percent per year, is the biggest challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi before the 2019 general election.

According to a World Bank research, automation threatens 69% of jobs in India. However, the Indian government seems to have taken cue from China which has invested in AI in a big way in the last few years. China has adopted AI to the extent 30 robots for every 10,000 industrial workers; which is more than any other country in the world, making its products available at cheaper rates to global consumers.