From Archives: Infosys's NIA, The Beijing Consensus on AI and Education and NITI Aayog’s Response
From The Indian Learning / The Bharat Pacific
Infosys's NIA: An Enterprise-Grade AI Platform
Aeron Thomas
Editorial Intern (The Indian Learning) Indian Society of Artificial Intelligence & Law
Infosys is a multinational IT company, it is the second-largest IT company in India after TATA consultancy services. It was founded in Pune and registered in the year 1981, headquartered in Bangalore. It mainly emphasis providing business consulting, information technology and outsourcing services. Its revenue reached well over 10 billion dollars in 2017. A company as big and successful as Infosys is considered to be at the top of their game in keeping themselves abreast in various technological advancements and inventions. In this era of Artificial Intelligence, Infosys managed to pioneer an AI platform, Infosys Nia. Infosys Nia is an enterprise-grade AI platform that quite simplifies the AI adoption journey designed for Business & IT. Infosys Nia supports end-to-end enterprise AI journey from the arenas of data management, digitization of documents and images, model development to operationalizing models. This initiative taken by the firm is to simply dismantle the problems faced by industries that are not able to move from AI experimentation to production, also the enterprises that are struggling to derive insights from their documents and also to boost enterprises that are finding it difficult to manage their siloed data assets.
The audiences targeted in the markets are those customers who are facing struggles in their firm, due to the continuous shift in advancing techs, and firms that are devoid of evolving the efficiency of their production due to lack of technology enforcements.
What is Nia?
Infosys’s Nia is a next-generation platform, which is very much inclined to tackle and help breakthrough business problems such as forecasting revenues, forecasting the kinds and types of products needed to be built, understanding customer behaviour, deeply understanding the content of contracts and legal documents, understanding compliance, and fraud. Such applications are much in demand due to various businesses booming and lots of them looking forward to enhancing the technological, efficient and productive aspects of the business. Infosys Nia is also furnished with tools that let it amass, ingest, and process as much information it can, empowering companies to constantly use past knowledge even as they grow and as their centre frameworks experience adjustments. Nia also aids in enabling them to spare assets particularly with regards to the workforce and the financial aspects.
The Beijing Consensus on AI and Education and NITI Aayog’s Response
Niharika Ravi
Research Intern (former)
Indian Society of Artificial Intelligence & Law
Introductory Note
The outcome document of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education held in Beijing in May 2019, or the Beijing Consensus on AI and Education, was constructed with contributions from around 500 international representatives from over 100 member states, UN agencies, academic institutions, civil society and private sector members, and 50 government ministers and vice ministers in reaffirmation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and specifically SDG 4 i.e. ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting life-long learning opportunities for all.
Problem Addressed
Recent trends in AI, which push it to have profound effects on all walks of life, were recognised at the Beijing Conference and the potential to harness the benefits of AI to reshape the core principles of the teaching-learning process were addressed.
Affirmations
While the 2015 Qingdao Declaration committed to inculcating the use of Information and Communication Technology in Education in its commitment to SDG 4. The complexity of the rapidly developing AI technology was censured in the collective wisdom of the congregation in Beijing, pushing them to reaffirm UNESCO’s humanistic approach to the use of AI, and prioritising the protection of human rights ineffective human-machine collaborations for learning, sustainable development, and other goals.
The Consensus observed that AI development must be both humane and human-controlled, ethical and equitable, transparent and non-discriminatory, and took a strong stand for the impact of AI on society and people to be monitored throughout value chains.
Dilution of a Free Worldwide Web: A Step Towards Digital Sovereignty or Away From Net Neutrality?
Updated: Nov 3, 2022
On Thursday, 6th August 2020, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order announcing sanctions on China’s ByteDance, owner of the TikTok App and Messaging App WeChat, effective 45 days from the date of signature of the order i.e. 6th August 2020. The sanctions effectively seek to remove WeChat and TikTok from Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store, by blocking the App at Network Level. This is the approach which is followed by China’s Great Firewall, and much more recently and locally by India, through the invocation of Section 69A of Information Technology Act, 2000.
The International Community’s Differentia towards Overseas Applications
The International Telecommunications Union (I.T.U.), in its Constitution, has Article 35 on Stoppage of Telecommunications which gives a free hand to the I.T.U. member nations “the Right to Suspend International Telecommunication Services”. This is commensurate with similar corresponding provisions in Municipal Law, be its provisions of the Telegraph Act and IT Act in India, Data Localization Policies or the Great Firewall of China or National Emergencies Act and International Emergencies Economic Powers Act of the United States.
National Security has been the most evident apprehension visible in the postures of Nations enforcing blockades to such Applications and has been visible in the statements made by the Administrations of the nations. The Trump Administration, for example, justifying its decision, stated that unabated spread of malicious Chinese Apps “threaten National Security, Foreign Policy and Economy” of the United States.
The Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology cited “the emergent nature of threats” posed by the apps and “information available” that they are engaged in activities “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of the state and public order”.
However, what is worth mentioning is that the concept of Data Sovereignty has been observed to have its most widespread application not in the US or South Asia but in Europe, in the form of Technological Sovereignty.[1]
As per Empirical Research, the nations are notoriously known for being surveillance states, namely China, Russia and Turkey occupy top spots in terms of Cross Border Data Transfer Restrictions. However, an interesting trend to note in this regard is the high rankings of European Union countries like France, Germany and Denmark.