India at the cusp of digital renaissance, responsible AI key: IBM India MD

IBM India Managing Director Sandip Patel on Tuesday announced a “Digital Renaissance” in India, emphasising the country’s leadership in AI adoption as he called for a focus on making AI practical, responsible, and embeddable. Patel, Managing Director (MD) of IBM India & South Asia, was delivering a keynote address at the IBM Think 2024 event here.

“Today we are living in a defining moment. We are witnessing India’s digital renaissance. I like to call it the ‘Naya Daur’ of digital Bharat, and each one of you here is propelling this charter, IBM, together with you, is committed to innovating in India, for India and the world.

“And we are doing that with our focused strategy on hybrid cloud and AI, which are today two of the most transformational technologies of our time,” he said.

AI, according to Patel, is not just a buzzword but a crucial growth accelerator for India.

Citing a recent survey carried out by IBM, he said 59 per cent of Indian enterprises are deploying AI, the highest rate globally.

Yet, he cautioned that moving from experimentation to scaling AI presents significant hurdles.

Patel urged companies to consider three fundamental questions when implementing AI: How to make it more practical for real-life use cases, how to ensure its responsible use, and how to embed it seamlessly into daily operations.

Scaling responsible AI is essential for achieving the vision of Viksit Bharat, he said, characterised by transparency, explainability, robustness, privacy, and fairness.

“Your AI must pass what I call the PRE (Practical, Responsible, Embeddable) test, for which you should ask three fundamental questions. One, how do I make AI more practical, ensuring that you deal with real-life use cases that carry business impact?

“Second, how do I make AI more responsible? You’ve heard about this earlier, and ensuring that to trust AI, especially around automation, as automation and decision-making are deployed to scale and third, how do I make my AI more embeddable, ensuring that AI is infused seamlessly into your day-to-day operations in the applications that are supporting and running your businesses,” Patel said.