He was answering a question about his thoughts on the new Digital Personal Data Protection Act. He explained that to realise the power of AI, the right infrastructure was needed, which essentially meant that cloud data centres and access to digital devices for everyone in the country was going to be fundamental.
“Once that infrastructure is there, what we will do is enable the empowerment of businesses and society at large to be able to make that impact what we are talking about,” he said while speaking at the B20 India event here on Friday.
He added that in a country like India, about 250 to 300 million people have access to information, and access to goods and services which just multiplies the whole GDP to a different level. “On the other hand, we talk about ageing economies. The ageing economies are also going to face longevity because of medical sciences, and all these people have to be taken care of and they don’t have enough human resources to provide the kind of service that is needed,” he said.
AI will come in handy here and play an important role because the vast majority of the things that have to be taken care of can be done by AI. “So the benefits are going to be different to different segments and in different markets. But everywhere it is going to create joy, it is going to create jobs, it is going to empower people to do a lot of jobs in markets where there are no people, it’s going to substitute for human beings and provide the service that is expected,” he said.This innovation should be allowed and in order to allow this integration, proper regulations are required and there should be the ability to build private applications on top of the public infrastructure. “That is what has happened in India. The legal framework has come up with this data privacy and data protection act, which provides the legal requirement,” he said.He explained that this technology architecture provides data empowerment and protection architecture. It creates the necessary public infrastructure architecture to build private applications and digital consent gets embedded.“So any sharing can be done at the aggregate level with proper consent. So it is a fantastic breakthrough I feel because it is very different from the traditional approach of wallet engineering, the laws and regulatory framework, which is totally punitive,” he said.
Usually in such punitive laws, there are fines for damages. “But in a country like India, you cannot put such large damages because there’s no way that people will pay. So the better way is to integrate a technology architecture with a legal framework. And that’s what it is. It is something to be studied and championed,” he added.
