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India has entered the global AI debate with an advisory requiring technology companies to seek government permission before launching new models.
India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT issued the advisory to companies on Friday. The advisory, which is not in the public domain but a copy of which was seen by TechCrunch, requires technology companies to ensure that their services and products “do not tolerate bias or discrimination of any kind and do not threaten the integrity of the electoral process.” ”.
Although the ministry acknowledged that the recommendations were not legally binding, Rajiv Chandrasekhar, India’s deputy IT minister, said the notification “signals that this is the future of regulation.”
He added: “We are making this today as a recommendation to be followed.”
In its recommendations, the ministry cited powers vested in it through the IT Act, 2000 and the IT Rules, 2021. The law requires compliance “with immediate effect” and requires tech companies to submit “measures taken and status reports” to the ministry within 15 days.
The new recommendations call on tech companies to “appropriately” label the “potential and inherent fallibility or unreliability” of the output produced by their AI models, and It marks a shift from India’s previous hands-off approach to regulation. Less than a year later, the ministry declined to regulate the growth of AI, instead identifying the field as critical to India’s strategic interests.
India’s move surprised many industry executives. Many Indian startups and venture capitalists are frightened by the new recommendations, saying they believe such regulations will hinder India’s ability to compete in a global race where it is already lagging behind. There is.
“I was really stupid to think of introducing GenAI to Indian agriculture from science fiction.” I have written Pratik Desai, founder of startup Kisan AI; “We were training a multimodal, low-cost pest and disease model and we were very excited. He has been working full time for four years to bring AI to this area of India. And this is terrible and demotivating.”
Many Silicon Valley leaders also criticized India’s policy shift. Aravind Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, one of his hottest AI startups, said the new recommendations from New DelhiIndia’s bad move”
Martin Casado, a partner at venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, says: Said“Good damn lord. What a travesty.”
The recommendation comes after Chandrasekhar expressed disappointment with certain actions by Google’s Gemini company last month. Last month, a user asked Gemini, formerly known as Bard, if Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a fascist.
In response, Gemini, citing unspecified experts, said Prime Minister Modi has been accused of implementing policies that are seen by some as fascist. Reacting to the exchange, Chandrasekhar warned Google that such a response was a “direct violation” of the IT Rules 2021 and “several provisions of the Penal Code.”
Violation of the provisions of the IT Act and IT Rules “if identified may lead to criminal penalties being imposed on the intermediaries and platforms or their users,” the advisory added.
