UPI-like AI service for MSMEs on common platform: Vaishnaw | Business News

Regarding India’s sovereign AI models, Vaishnaw said several models launched at the summit have been tested and measured against multiple parameters, and rated higher than many large international AI systems, underscoring India’s innovation capabilities.

He noted that Stanford has ranked India among the top three AI nations globally.

Vaishnaw said over the next two years, more than $200 billion worth of investment is likely to come. He noted the commitment of venture capital firms to deep-tech startups and said investments are coming across all five layers of the AI stack.

Acknowledging the chaos that ensued on the inaugural day of the conference that saw serpentine queues as many attendees waited for hours just to clear security checks and reach the halls, Vaishnaw said the summit saw a “huge response” from young people.

Responding to a question on the impact of AI tools on India’s IT services, which have seen sharp selloffs in the last week, the minister said the sector is one of the country’s biggest strengths, and the government, industry and academia would have to come together in this time of technological transition to figure out the path ahead.

“We’re working to upskill our existing talent pipeline so that the coming generation is ready for the technology,” Vaishnaw said.

Vaishnaw, who is also the I&B Minister, also said the government believes news publishers should get fair remuneration from AI companies using their data to build their language models.

“As most of the AI models are trained on media which is available in public domain, we believe content creators, specially news creators, must get a fair remuneration for the content they are creating… and that’s something we sincerely believe as a government, and I think the public policy should also be oriented towards that,” said Vaishnaw.

“We are talking to the big platforms, they have more-or-less shown inclination towards the process by which fair remuneration to content creators, especially the news creators, who are the part of the conventional media where the content is used by digital platforms,” the minister added.

A committee constituted by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), in a white paper released last year, recommended a mandatory blanket licence requiring all AI companies to pay royalties for using copyrighted work to creators.

The recommendations suggest that a committee, constituted by the government, would decide the royalty fee. If implemented, India would become the only country to prescribe a statutory licensing regime for AI developers, with royalty rates prescribed by a government-appointed committee.