Had a very satisfying week honestly :)
I had spoken in a trialogue (not "Dialogue") of sorts with Sh. Sujeet Kumar, a Rajya Sabha MP from Odisha for Young Odisha.
Watch the complete session at abhivardhan.com/engage
Yes, it was another "AI regulation" discussion, but what kept this one special was the way this discussion evolved.
The respected parliamentarian, who is an engineer-turned-lawmaker and a legal professional as well - has ubiquitous wisdom and commonsensical understanding of real-life AI risks and problems, which is maybe a gold standard for other Indian parliamentarians to look forward to :)
While he discussed how Character.AI's AI system caused a person to commit suicide in the US, inducing liability questions around LLM deliverables, I pointed out how Agentic AI isn't safe and surpasses application and OS layer, destroying the concept of autonomy, and human consent.
Interestingly, while intricacies of AI governance are hard for people to understand, the audience still asked pretty legit questions - like "should we teach India-centric AI ethics in classrooms?", "how can data regulation avoid privacy violations (if)?", "children still think that GPTs can give them all answers, so why to study and do homework yourself, isn't it?" (cc Nirmal Patel).
Yes, they are repetitive questions, but not that repetitive to be fair.
I know - everyone says -
"Abhivardhan, you talk too high-level around AI in India"
"you have published a lot but who reads, who cares, anyways? Indians find AI high-level, how will they understand ethics of AI?"
- but I am glad that Lory Pattnaik, the moderator - actually went through some of my 40+ publications in technology law and AI governance, which I personally found delightful.
At least someone reads :P
There are a lot of nuggets in this discussion that you can find in this video.
Also delighted to know that the revered parliamentarian is one of the founding members of the Artificial Intelligence Legislators' Forum (AILF) curated by Sagar Vishnoi-led Future Shift Labs, our external partners at Indic Pacific Legal Research.
I really look forward to participate in genuine discourses honestly. Agreeing with Raymond Sun - AI regulation discussions have become boring, but this one that I had last night, didn't seem boring at all, gladly.
