The Government of India recently announced the integration of concepts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) from Class III in educational institutions. The question is: will the incorporation of AI in school curriculum bring any fundamental difference in knowledge systems imparted to students at early age? The development of AI based systems is contingent on solution driven sophisticated AI models that rely on infrastructure for high-speed computation. The essential resources should be easily accessible to learners, lest the AI learning should relegate to the status of another boulder on young shoulders with minimal value addition to learning and skill development. Most of the public schools and institutions lack even the basic amenities viz. desks, chairs, electricity, clean drinking water, sanitation facilities and trained teachers. Given the prevailing condition, will AI inclusion ensure even the basic hardware infrastructure like computer systems, uninterrupted power supply and internet connection?
In the public schools that are currently reeling under the crisis of paucity of the teaching staff, is the government planning to hire teachers skilled even in the foundational subjects of AI? The private schools may garner the opportunity to collect additional tuition fee from students, in the name of infrastructure expansion for imparting AI skills. The economic consequences of AI learning system on most of the parents may not be evident in the initial years, as the AI foundation skills are based on fundamental subjects such as Mathematics and Statistics. But advanced learning in higher classes shall unequivocally demand additional charges to cover up the cost of resources essential for high-speed computation and on demand cloud services, critical for running machine learning algorithms and building AI based applications (for academic projects). The new education policy emphasises data protection and student data privacy. How will this be ensured, given the flow of citizens’ data to servers stationed offshore?
Have the government policy makers pondered over the problem of limited access of resources to thousands of young minds who cannot afford even a personal laptop and have few school hours at their disposal to cultivate AI skills? Even the learners from financially sound backgrounds are left with few options to run their AI models. These options demand monthly subscription charges payable in foreign currencies. Given millions of learners across the country, the digital infrastructure offering commercially available cloud servers contribute to the country’s escalating import bills and exacerbate the current wave of depreciation of the domestic currency.
Technical expertise remains unachievable in the absence of the opportunities to implement the applied knowledge. Do the home-grown tech industries have the capacity to absorb the burgeoning class of AI skilled workforce and young minds who have a yearning for experimentation with novel ideas? Most of these organisations in hi-tech industries have not moved beyond offering IT based solutions and services to their clients mostly in USA and Europe. Will there be a system that encourages the fruition of public Research and Development centres to absorb growing number of skilled entrants, equipped with strong fundamentals, for building sophisticated AI systems with applications ranging from home appliances to military defence? Or will the education institutions keep churning out high school and college graduates who, in the delusion of bright future in AI, will eventually find themselves trapped in the vicious cycle of low skilled jobs, constant pressure of upskilling and a lack of opportunities owing to low focus on R&D in private and public sector? A lack of robust AI policy has deterred the indigenisation of high-speed cloud servers, chips, GPU memory cards, data processing and AI models like Large Language Models or Generative AI based models, affecting the proliferation of highly skilled AI professionals. Even the development of sophisticated models is contingent on localisation of terabytes of data. But the government’s dismal performance in formulating a robust personal data protection legal framework has provided strong levers to the foreign tech giants to process freely available and unprotected data to build and maintain sophisticated AI systems. The platforms built on these AI systems are monetised though commercialisation of digital infrastructure by foreign entities, thereby turning Indians into mere users and subscribers of services like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Colab and social media platforms like X handle and You tube. While the private sector is eager to leverage the growing importance of new data centres, the new projects are joint ventures with foreign entities. Even though stationed within the geographical limits, the involvement of foreign entities raises questions on the credibility of the data centres’ compliance with data localisation norms.