(L-R) Tanuj Bhojwani, Head, people + ai and Hemant Mohapatra, Partner, Lightspeed India

Early regulations around artificial intelligence (AI) may stifle innovation, however India’s government is open to supporting entrepreneurs and businesses experimenting meaningful use-cases,  said Tanuj Bhojwani, head of  people +ai, a non-government organisation (NGO) backed by Aadhaar architect Nandan Nilekani.

Bhojwani was speaking at the Moneycontrol and CNBC-TV18 AI Alliance NCR Chapter in Gurugram held on May 17.

“If we look at Europe which has regulated building around AI at a very early stage, many founders want to get out of there and build somewhere else… Indian government is starting to make the right moves,” said Bhojwani.

At the AI Alliance NCR event, S Krishnan, the Secretary at the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, discussed the vision of Centre’s AI Mission Programme. He said that India’s AI regulation is evolving.

“Regulation around AI is evolving. The fact that there is a hiatus because of the electoral process is a good thing as it gives us more time to understand what shape it should take. MeitY is getting inputs from academia, industry, legal experts and other stakeholders on what shape it should take. We are even talking to peers in other jurisdictions,” he said.

The Indian government has allocated a budget of Rs 10,400 crore for AI development under its flagship AI Mission Programme.

Several large countries have passed order to regulate AI. US government recently passed an executive order on AI regulation. Similarly, the UK government is also working towards a framework to regulate AI that does not stifle innovation. So far, India has maintained a middle-path to regulate AI.

Talking about the government’s support, Bhojwani added that founders who are building on AI must prove that there is population-scale demand for their product.

“India’s stand is very clear, whatever we are building now is a moonshot and we are doing what we can. This is a signal from the government that whatever we are doing is an experiment, it is good for the country however we need to be a demand-generator that it will solve the problems that are existing and the government will become a large customer for it,” he said.

Talking about building LLMs from India, Hemant Mohapatra, Partner at Lightspeed India said that while he would love the country to wage the wars where they can win, there seems to be the question of capacity and talent when it comes to building foundational models for AI.

Also Read: AI Alliance NCR: India doesn’t have the capacity nor talent to build foundational models, says Lightspeed’s Hemant Mohapatra

Foundational models are a form of machine learning model used for building generative AI tools, and is capable of performing a wide variety of general tasks such as understanding language, generating text and images, and conversing in natural language.