India has unique advantage to harness its enormous digital capital for AI-driven development: Mukesh Ambani
Oct 05, 2020
New Delhi [India], October 5 : Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Monday said that Artificial intelligence (AI) is indispensable to India's tryst with digital destiny and asserted that the country has a unique advantage to harness its enormous digital capital for AI-driven development.
Speaking at RAISE 2020 Virtual Summit, he said if 1.3 billion Indians are digitally empowered then they will unleash a proliferation of new digital enterprises that will create faster economic growth, greater prosperity, high-quality employment opportunities and better standards of living across all sections of society.
"AI is indispensable with India's tryst with digital destiny. We now have all the crucial components in place to make India a premier digital society. Together our economy and society will generate data at an exclusive and exponential rate. Data is the raw material for AI. Intelligent data is digital capital. It is a vital national resource," he said.
"In the coming decades, nations will increasingly compete on digital capital. India has the unique advantage to harness its enormous digital capital for AI-driven development which is bottom-up and inclusive. This is because of our twin strengths of democracy and demography," he added.
The RIL chairman expressed confidence that the government will introduce a sound data regulation framework to protect this national resource and ensure data privacy.
"Therefore, the time is right and tools are ready to make India a world leader in AI, and to make AI work for all Indians. It is important to understand the epoch changing importance of AI. The advent of modern AI is comparable only to the birth of intelligent life of our planet," he said.
"In the coming decades, the total non-biological intelligence will exceed the rational intelligence of the entire human population. But this does not mean AI will replace the human mind. It never can, it never will. Rather AI and associated technologies for the fourth industrial revolution will vastly expand our capacity to solve the most and present problems before India and the world," he added.
Ambani said that AI will enable India to move faster to achieve PM Modi's five ambitious goals- USD 5 trillion economy, modernising agriculture, doubling farmers' income, high-quality affordable healthcare to all, delivering world-class education and "making our Industry and our small businesses Atmanirbhar and dominating new global value chains".
Ambani said that India has delivered 4G broadband coverage to more than 99 per cent of citizens.
"We have gone from 115 in the world to number 1 in mobile data consumption. With 5G around the corner, India will maintain its leadership position," he said.
He said that the country is now rolling out a massive pan-India optical fibre network connecting not only all cities and towns but each of 6 lakh villages that will put it among the top nations in fixed broadband as well.
