Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnav has highlighted the “scary” part of Artificial Intelligence (AI), noting that a multi-pronged approach is needed to ensure cyber security in society.
Addressing the concluding session of the G20 Summit on Crime and Security in the Age of NFTs, AI and Metaverse, held in Gurugram, Vaishnav talked about cyber security challenges, Big Tech monopolies and key steps by the government to reduce the digital divide. Did.
In his speech, the Minister said that cyber security has been a complex challenge and AI is going to increase the complexity manifold.
Talking about AI, he referred to what OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said when he was asked if AI can do basic research. Quoting Altman, the Union Minister said: “AI cannot do basic research but we are not far from the day when AI will do the same basic research that brilliant minds have done.”
Vaishnav described the incident as ‘scary’ and said, “We have to make a strategy [for cybersecurity] One strategy at the national level, one at the organizational level and another at the individual level. We can’t leave it thinking it has a firewall and we can be safe from it.”
He also highlighted that if a cyber attack occurs in one country, other countries need to cooperate and come up with common solutions. He also talked about developing new tools to mitigate cyber security challenges.
“One of such solutions was so effective that we successfully blocked lakhs of fraudulent accounts that were used to commit cyber frauds, working with Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Telecom, Ministry of IT and State Governments,” he said. ” He said that such an approach needs to be adopted at the international level as well.
However, Vaishnav said efforts are needed at the national and global level to create cyber awareness and follow cyber rules for cyber hygiene – just like teaching everyone to drive on one side of the road on a highway. Legal and educational structures were created for Networks have been created.
democratization of tech
According to Vaishnav, one of the key objectives of the Digital India mission was that technology should be democratised. He further said that in many parts of the world, a few big tech companies control technology and asked: “Is this the right model for a country or a democracy or a society that is developing so rapidly?”
The Union Minister then talked about an alternate option which is essential for the democratization of technology. It has three aspects which include that technology should in no case be controlled by a handful of companies, everyone should have access to technology and technology should cover all areas that affect the daily life of a common man. We do. Needless to say, the government resorted to public-private partnership to achieve these goals.
The first example in this case is India’s UPI revolution. The UPI platform – an open platform available to all – was developed by the government using public funds. Later, banks, startups and SMEs joined the platform.
“Nearly 350 million citizens of India are connected to this platform and the result is a payments system that today handles transactions worth about $2 trillion on an annual basis with an average transaction settlement time of less than two seconds.” He added.
However, there are similar platforms built for different needs. For e-commerce, there is the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and for healthcare CoWIN which was created during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
digital divide
Literacy, lack of infrastructure and inability to use the tools already available are three major issues that have been at the core of the digital divide. “If we don’t act on digital inclusion today, the gap will widen exponentially,” Vaishnav said.
He further said that around 850 million people in India have access to the internet “but it is not enough”. According to the minister, the government is working to bring every village and every part of the country under good high quality 4G and 5G as well as broadband coverage.
“We have a program to reach the farthest corner of the country – a 4G saturation programme. We are investing about $4.6 billion to bring telecom services to areas where it may not make good business sense for the private sector to have 4G services, Vaishnav said.
Additionally, he said that so far, the government has invested $8.3 billion in building an optical fiber grid to provide connectivity to every village. This has now been augmented with an investment of $13 billion under the BharatNet programme.
“Just as we have invested in highways and power grids in developed countries in the past and in developing countries today, a similar effort must be made to ensure that our internet connectivity, optical fiber and telecommunication networks reach people ” the last man of the society,” he said