Revision as of 11:42, 15 July 2023

Nature Index

2020

Chandrima Banerjee, December 26, 2020: The Times of India

Elephants don’t play chess. They don’t need to. They need to know how to forage for food, protect themselves from predators, mate and migrate. In 1990, this argument changed how the world thought of Artificial Intelligence. MIT professor Rodney Brooks said AI must interact with the physical environment and not just rely on complex (and slow) computation of symbols, the way human brains do. So, they don’t all need to play chess.

Three decades since then, AI seems to be in its summer (periods of slow funding have been called ‘AI winter’ by researchers). Between 2000 and 2019, global output for AI research grew by more than 600%, the latest ‘Nature Index 2020 Artificial Intelligence’, released last week, said. China, with a 120% jump in output, leads AI research this year. That has been complemented by technology we can use. The Nature Index placed the US at the top for AI innovation this year.

India has been the third most productive country in AI research, with over 23,000 papers. On the overall AI Index, it is at the 20th position in alist dominated by European countries. Of the top 100 research organisations Nature identified, only one Indian organisation made the cut — Anna University in Chennai.

In fact, an AI Readiness Index by UK-based consultancy Oxford Insights had in September given India a score of 100 on vision. Yet, the country was 40th on a list of 172 countries. “India, Russia and China all score near the bottom of the (Responsible Use) Sub-Index,” it said. So, it gave India a score of 31 on privacy and just 23 on transparency.

Startups

2022

Shilpa Phadnis, June 23, 2023: The Times of India

AI startups in India, presumably as in 2022
From: Shilpa Phadnis, June 23, 2023: The Times of India

BENGALURU: India has over 60 generative AI startups, says a new report by industry body Nasscom. Generative AI startups in the country, it said, have already raised $590 million in funding, and most of it ($475 million) was from 2021 alone.

The Bengaluru region has 45% of the generative AI startups. The city's deeptech startup ecosystem, high-end innovation-driven institutions, extensive industry presence and an emerging class of domestic angel investors are seen to be a big draw. The Mumbai-Pune region accounts for the second-largest pool, at 21%. This region boasts of some of the most well-established institutional investors & VCs, and a diverse talent pool.

The report said 74% of startups are generative AI native and 26% are those that have pivoted. About 37% of the non-commercialised solutions are expected to find markets within a year. Many Indian generative AI startups prefer a tech stack comprising public cloud and cloud-based databases, pre-trained models, and custom-built visualisation tools.

"Being a nascent technology, big-ticket investments, particularly in native Indian foundational models and enterprise-grade applications services, are yet to happen. In addition to limited investments, generative AI startups in India also face the challenge of limited high-quality and ready-to-use training datasets and lack of high-performance compute capacity at scale. Lack of clarity on data privacy, security, ethical guidelines, and globally consistent generative AI usage standards can further slow down growth," Nasscom executives Sangeeta Gupta, SVP & chief strategy officer, and Achyuta Ghosh, research head, say in the report. They said companies will find it difficult to upskill a large workforce rapidly in 6-12 months.

Nasscom's data shows that $8 billion was pumped into AI from 2013 to 2022 ($3.2 billion in 2022 alone) across 1,900 AI startups in India.