Equity in Technology Diffusion in India — The case of access to AI
India has almost 1.2 billion mobile phone users and and 600 million smartphone users. The number of smart phone users is expected to reach a whopping 1 billion by 2026. The penetration of Internet in India is close to 50% and is bound to increase in the coming years. These are some Infrastructural statistics, which enables the penetration and adoption of new technologies in India.
The rise of Social Media changed the way people communicate and share information. The diffusion of social media platforms in India started slowly but reached to unprecedented numbers. WhatsApp was launched in 2010, YouTube in 2008 and Facebook in 2006. WhatsApp in India has somewhere between 400–500 million users. YouTube has close to 265 million users and Facebook has around 300–315 million users. The rise in these numbers have just taken a decade to a decade and a half.
UPI payments have seen a similar explosion in recent years, staring with 6 million transactions in 2017 to 7309 million transactions in November 2022. The changes and disruptions caused by these technologies has been unprecedented and has affected every sector of the Indian Economy. So what happens when a breakthrough in a profound technology (AI) happens, in terms of diffusion and adoption in India?
There is tremendous excitement around Generative AI in the Tech Circles, Startup Ecosystem and IT companies in General. Almost every organization is pivoting towards an AI first Strategy for growth. Most of this excitement and application of AI would be directed towards tech company clients who generally reside overseas. The startup ecosystem would be trying to cater to the middle class market with their products and services by leveraging Generative AI. So what happens to the large swathes of population living in rural areas with limited access to computing and internet access. The transformational productivity gains provided by Large Language Models would not reach a lot of people and would put them in a more disadvantaged position in the near term as well as long term. This will further skew inequalities and would put immense pressure on the government in terms of skills and employment. There are AI initiatives by the government of India which are promising. The role of the government and non profits would be essential in the diffusion of AI in India. The Scaling up of initiatives would be detrimental for the future of AI equity in India.
