What Policies Should India Emulate From The US’s AI Playbook?

The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) recently published the Final Report for 2021 outlining an integrated national strategy to empower the US in the era of AI-accelerated competition and conflict.

NSCAI worked with technologists, national security professionals, business executives and academic leaders to put out the report. According to the report, the US government is a long way from being “AI-ready.” Based on the findings, the commission has proposed a set of policy recommendations.

The US leads in almost all AI parameters than most countries, including India. To get a perspective compared to the US’s benchmarks, we analyse where India stands in terms of the policy recommendations made in the NSCAI report. 

Shoring Up

The first part of the report analyses how advanced AI technologies can present a threat and how the US should prepare for such attacks. 

A country’s digital dependence on other nations is potential national security death traps. This invites adversaries to deploy AI systems that can enhance disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks. Hence, the report recommends securing US databases and prioritising data security through national data protection legislation.

India’s ranking in digital competitiveness fell to the 48th position in 2020, where the US was ranked in the top 2. India also witnessed a rising number of cyber-attacks in the last few years, with 1.45 million cybersecurity incidents recorded by CERT-In from 2015 to 2020. To add to that, India’s cybersecurity policy, last drafted in 2013, has several weaknesses in its legal framework.

Apart from developing a good defensive strategy, the report recommends the US to establish an ecosystem for adopting AI across their military missions by building common digital infrastructures and developing a digitally-literate workforce. The report states that the US might lose its military-technical advantage within a decade if it fails to do so. 

To incorporate AI and develop Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), India formulated a 17-member task force under the Ministry of Defence in 2018 that identified use cases like unmanned tanks and underwater vessels for LAWS development in India. While the DRDO’s Centre for AI & Robotics (CAIR) is working on a range of applications, India’s current artillery does not have autonomous weapons, according to experts. The US, in comparison, invests significantly more than India in next-gen military technologies. 

The NSCAI report also mentions the significance of the development of LAWS being consistent with international humanitarian law. India is a part of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), comprising approximately 125 member states that have called for a “legally binding international instrument stipulating prohibitions and regulations on LAWS” several times since 2018. Around 30 countries have also called for a complete ban on autonomous weapons. However, both India and the US are not among them.

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Along with the LAWS, the NSCAI report highlights the significance of AI in intelligence gathering and scaling up the talent in public institutions to effectively use intelligent technologies. 

India’s domestic capability in intelligence technologies is currently ‘sorely missing’, and the country is almost exclusively dependent on imports. However, India has the AI talent to change this. Hence, experts recommend an interactive AI framework to facilitate communication between the AI industry and the military. 

Finally, any AI deployed by the US government must respect privacy, civil liberties and civil rights. For this, the nation must strengthen its governance mechanisms.

India currently does not have any laws that protect citizens against the repercussions of AI. And apart from the RTI Act, there is no mechanism to ensure privacy. India also has weak data protection laws, with…