The Barcelona city website's blog discusses how the city is implementing artificial intelligence in a way that protects health and safety while also protecting citizens' rights. Each of these projects is highly valuable, but the third project stood out to me for its novelty. The city needed to ensure that its beaches were not overcrowded. They could have used an AI facial recognition algorithm to scan the faces of every person who entered a beach. Instead, they used thermal image processing to assess which parts of the beach were full.

Responsible artificial intelligence (AI) provides a framework for building trust in the AI solutions of an organisation, according to a report from Accenture. It is defined as the practice of designing, developing, and deploying AI with good intention to empower employees and businesses, and fairly impact customers and society. In turn, this allows companies to stimulate trust and scale AI with confidence. With technology starting to become commonplace, more organisations around the world are seeing the need to adopt responsible AI. For example, Microsoft relies on an AI, Ethics, and Effects in Engineering and Research (Aether) Committee to advise its leadership on the challenges and opportunities presented by AI innovations. Some of the elements the committee examines is how fairly AI systems treat people, the reliability and safety of AI systems, how AI systems empower employees to engage with one other, and how understandable AI systems are.

You know for sure AI has formally gone mainstream when it is a hot topic among government circles. To give a few instances -- the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has partnered with Microsoft to enable tech skills development, while the Indian army is seeking intuitive AI assistance in its weapon systems and surveillance programmes. And more recently, the Housing Ministry has ordered AI algorithms to cut down bookkeeping corruption incidences. But the most prominent development has been the proposal of Rs.7,500-crore plan by Niti Aayog to create an institutional framework for AI in the country. And while the public sector is poised to play a crucial role in the growth of India's future, the increasing adoption of AI in the corporate world is calling for experts to create responsible AI technologies.