How India can harness 'globotics' revolution in artificial intelligence

The revolutionary development in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and its dramatic consequences, is a global economic upheaval and one that will both provide opportunities for and challenge India dramatically. Discussing India's response to this global upheaval, Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator, Financial Times, London, said, "India needs to devote careful thought to the domestic implications of the revolution in artificial intelligence." He explained, "As a country with a growing population and labour force and huge employment in services, the implications might be very radical, both creating and destroying opportunities on a massive scale." Wolf, who delivered the seventh NCAER CD Deshmukh Memorial Lecture 2019 in New Delhi on Tuesday, spoke on the theme of Challenges for India from the Global Economic Upheavals. The other upheavals he addressed were the rapid economic rise of Asia, the strategic rivalry between the US and China, growing protectionism in the US and the associated erosion of the liberal global economic order and the threat of climate change. Wolf, who has many times described India as a "premature superpower", summed up his arguments, saying that all these global upheavals will have profound implications for India as "they alter the environment in which it [India] hopes to develop, they demand substantial and far-sighted domestic responses and they will force it to clarify its global stance."