IndiaAI selects 8 projects to help develop safe and ethical artificial intelligence

They include projects from universities, start-ups, research organizations, and civil society

If you asked most people if there needs to be an ethical framework in place for the implementation of AI, most people would agree. Yet, what that looks like is more difficult to pin down.

The IndiaAI Mission, which aims to democratize AI's benefits across all strata of Indian society, bolster India’s global leadership in AI, foster technological self-reliance, and ensure ethical and responsible use of AI, is turning to the country's own people to help sort that out, announcing on Thursday the selection of eight projects to enhance safe and trusted AI development.

These AI projects encompass themes that include machine unlearning, synthetic data generation, AI bias mitigation, ethical AI frameworks, privacy-enhancing tools, explainable AI, AI governance testing, and algorithm auditing tools.

A multi-stakeholder committee was created to provide technical expertise for the evaluation of the more than 2,000 proposals that were received from academic institutions, start-ups, research organizations, and civil society

These were the eight that were ultimately chosen:

• Machine Unlearning in Generative Foundation Models from Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur
• Design and Development of Method for Generating Synthetic Data for Mitigating Bias in Datasets; and Framework for Mitigating Bias in Machine Learning Pipeline for Responsible AI, from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee
• Development of Responsible Artificial Intelligence for Bias Mitigation in Health Care Systems from National Institute of Technology Raipur
• Enabling Explainable and Privacy Preserving AI for Security from Defence Institute of Advanced Technology, Pune in partnership with Mindgraph Technology Pvt. Ltd.
• Robust Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning Models from Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi in partnership with Telecommunication Engineering Center
• Nishpaksh: Tools for assessing fairness of AI model from Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi in partnership with Telecommunication Engineering Center
• ParakhAI - An open-source framework and toolkit for Participatory Algorithmic Auditing from Civic Data Labs
• Track-LLM, Transparency, Risk Assessment, Context & Knowledge for Large Language Models from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham in partnership with Telecommunication Engineering Center

“As AI continues to permeate various sectors of society, India is committed to invest in agile mechanisms for developing indigenous governance tools, frameworks, and guidelines that are based on Indian datasets and reflect its unique challenges, opportunities, and datasets,” the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in a statement.

This comes as countries around the world grapple with the rapid influx of AI technology and the ethical concerns that come with it. 

California governor Gavin Newsom recently vetoed a bill creating AI safeguards and regulations. The Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act would have created regulations and safeguards around the use of AI, yet the governor stated that the bill "establishes a regulatory framework that could give the public a false sense of security about controlling this fast-moving technology."

(Image source: twimg.com)