TRAI Recommends Setting Up Artificial Intelligence and Data Authority of India (AIDAI)

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has today released its recommendations on ‘Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Big Data in Telecommunication Sector’. The telecom regulatory body also proposed that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY) be designated as the administrative ministry for AI.

TRAI recommends setting up regulatory framework. "For ensuring development of responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) in India, there is an urgent need to adopt a regulatory framework by the Government that should be applicable across sectors," says the TRAI recommendation.The broad principles of the suggested regulatory framework, TRAI says should comprise of —

• An independent statutory authority.
• A Multi Stakeholder Body (MSB) that will act as an advisory body to the proposed statutory authority.
• Categorizations of the AI use cases based on their risk and regulating them according to broad principles of Responsible AI

TRAI recommends of immediately establishing an independent statutory authority for ensuring development of responsible AI and regulation of use cases in India.

TRAI designates the authority as — “Artificial Intelligence and Data Authority of India” (AIDAI).

AIDAI functions –

• Regulation Making Functions
• Recommendatory functions 

Regulation Making Functions –

• Framing regulations on various aspects of AI including its responsible use. 
• Defining principles of responsible AI and their applicability on AI use cases based on risk assessment.
• AIDAI should evolve the framework based on its assessment, advice of proposed MSB, global best practices, and public consultation.
• Ensuring that principles of responsible AI are made applicable at each phase of AI framework lifecycle viz. design, development, validation, deployment, monitoring and refinement.
• Developing model AI Governance Framework to guide organizations on deploying AI in a responsible manner.
• Developing model Ethical Codes for adoption by public and private entities in different sectors. Any other aspect of regulation of AI for orderly growth of the AI s ector and protection of the consumers

Recommondatory Functions —

• Facilitating adoption of future technologies and innovative architectures related to AI models.
• Monitoring and making recommendations on the enforcement framework on AI applications and its u se cases.
• Coordinating with technical standard setting bodies of government like Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC) for accreditation of various labs for testing and accreditation of AI products and solutions and giving recommendations thereof.
• Capacity building and infrastructure requirements related evaluation and giving recommendations to the Government.
• Assess the data digitization requirement in the country; review and prioritize the avenues requiring concentrated efforts for data digitization and fix time frames accordingly.
• Be the apex body to oversee all issues related to data digitization, data sharing and data monetization in the country including framing policies and incentivization schemes for data digitalization, data sharing and data mone tization.
• Define the process framework for use of AI and related technology in data processing, data sharing and data monetization while ensuring the privacy and security of the data owner.
• Putting in place an overarching framework for ethical use of data both by the Government as well as by the corporates in India.The framework should address the generic as well as vertical sector specific requirements.
• Study the possible impact of upcoming technologies on data ethics and come out with relevant rules/guidelines on the subject. 
• Creation of a national level mechanism to bring the State Governments, Local Bodies and other agencies onboard to adopt the national policy on data governance.
• Creation of a uniform framework to on entities for adoptboard private ion of national policy on data governance and to enable them and public sector entities to digitalize, monetize and share their data within the privacy and other applicable laws and policies.

TRAI also recommend that DoT should, in collaboration with organizations such as IISc Bangalore, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur and other research institutes, launch research in telecommunication s develop indigenous AI use cases.

In the recommendation, TRAI advices of AI Specific Infrastructure and Experimental Campuses.

"At least one Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence (CoEAI) should be established in each State/UT for facilitating educational institutions, startups, innovators, researchers and other public/private entities to develop and demonstrate technological capabilities. These centres should have access to high bandwidth, computational facilities and data sets for training AI models. All such centres should also be linked with proposed 5G/6G labs for sharing of resources and knowledge. To galvanize an effective AI ecosystem and to nurture quality human resources these CoE-AIs should allow industry players as well as startups to partner with academia in conducting research, developing cutting-edge applications and scalable problem solutions in various fields such as agriculture, healthcare, education, smart cities, smart mobilities, etc.," the recommendation paper mentioned.

Meanwhile, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) released their "Interim Measures for the Management of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services." In this , the Chinese government lays out its rules to regulate those who provide generative AI capabilities to the public in China.

While the US is still underway to Regulate AI, the EU’s AI Act is being speculated as the possible global standard for AI Regulation,just like GDPR – likely changing how many machine learning engineers do their work. The proposal includes a ban on certain uses of AI, such as facial recognition in public spaces, as well as requirements for transparency and accountability in the use of AI.

To recall, TRAI had earlier floated a consultation paper to explore a framework for internet-based calls and messaging apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Apple's FaceTime etc. and selectively ban their services during emergency situations.

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