Artificial Intelligence (AI), Today's Status & Tomorrow's Promise

By Biraja Prasad Mahapatra

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the fastest-growing area of research and development in today's world of technology and innovation. In this article, let us look at the current status of its worldwide adoption and understand how it is going to play an important role in India's future.

Deep Blue to Deep Seek

In the year 1997, IBM's "Deep Blue" was the first computer to beat the reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a tournament. By 2018, the California Department of Motor Vehicles issued a permit for Waymo to operate driverless cars. Waymo was the first company to receive a permit that allowed day and night testing on public roads and highways. Large firms in developed countries have adopted AI technologies like precision agriculture, autonomous machinery, and predictive analytics. AI-driven precision farming increases crop yields by up to 30% through optimized resource use. In the healthcare sector, AI is used in diagnosis, treatment, administration, drug discovery and preventive care. Digital Assistants, Search engines, Social media, Online shopping, Robots, Transportation and navigation, Text editing and autocorrect, Fraud prevention, Predictions, Gaming, Healthcare, Advertising and Analytics etc are some of the other areas being transformed by AI.

Social media and AI

We all have experienced the surge of the Internet in the last few decades. Social Networking sites such as Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, X, and WhatsApp etc have become inseparable part of our daily life. As of early 2025, approximately 5.6 billion people worldwide use the Internet, representing approximately 70% of the global population with the average user spending around 5 hours online daily. This digital life has generated enormous amounts of data that are stored in various public and private data centers worldwide. It is not rocket science to imagine that traditional human intelligence is simply not capable of processing it, let alone acting on it. This data that reflects the world's requirements and consumption patterns can now be leveraged by AI to derive efficiency and improve the return of investments.

AI tools gaining adoption

Today AI is being increasingly used in sectors such as Governance, Healthcare, Agriculture, Education, Business, Law & Order, Judiciary, Transportation, Sports etc. It is helping in faster processing of data, enhanced accuracy in decision making, innovation & discovery, productivity improvement, exploration, and synthesis of both structured and unstructured data. Several AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Cloude, Synthesia, Azure, Salesforce, and DeepSeek etc are already being used actively. Traditional AI tools that used to only analyze existing data have evolved into Generative AI tools that create content similar to what a human might produce. Large Language Models (LLMs) are a specific class of generative AI models that are trained to understand and generate human-like texts. Therefore we can safely say that it is of paramount importance for the government and business to think how AI can be effectively used to create a better world.

Regulation and Challenges for India

Currently, there is no single, unified worldwide regulation for AI but various countries and international organizations are actively working towards the same. The most prominent example that comes to mind is the European Union's "Artificial Intelligence Act" which is considered as one of the most comprehensive AI regulations globally.
India, being the fastest-growing economy with the second largest population in the world, has a significant stake in the AI revolution. The AI market in India is predicted to reach $8 billion by the end of 2025, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 40% from 2020. This growth is naturally part of the global AI boom. India is considering both creating its own indigenous AI stack as well as leveraging open LLMs to develop applications. NITI Aayog has developed a strategy to guide the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in India. The strategy includes a roadmap for safe and beneficial AI adoption in public sectors and principles for responsible AI development. 

However, there are many challenges that need to be addressed while deploying mass-scale adoption of AI technology, especially in India. AI solutions use huge volumes of confidential data, which must be protected to prevent unauthorised and unlawful usage.  India is moving in the right direction with the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, and the National Cyber Security Strategy, 2020. Limited AI expertise and lack of investments to implement AI solutions may reduce our speed of AI adoption. Hence there is an urgent need for NASSCOM to implement such future skill programs at the national level. India also needs to accelerate required infrastructure implementation such as AI-enabled Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) platforms like Aadhar, UPI, DigiLocker etc. Suman Bery, Vice Chairperson of NITI Aayog, said artificial intelligence will propel India's growth in the years to come, fuelling the Prime Minister's 'Viksit Bharat' vision to transform the country into a developed nation by 2047.   

(The author is the Director - Business Development for a global leader in wireless telecommunication software company based out of Bangalore.)