Editorial 1: Children, a key yet missed demographic in AI regulation
Context
- India is to host the first-ever global summit on Artificial Intelligence (AI) this October. Additionally, as the Chair of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), India will also be hosting the GPAI global summit in December. These events suggest the strategic importance of AI, as it is projected to add $500 billion to India’s economy by 2025, accounting for 10% of the country’s target GDP.
The issue
- One area where India can assume leadership is how regulators address children and adolescents who are a critical (yet less understood) demographic in this context.
- The nature of digital services means that many cutting-edge AI deployments are not designed specifically for children but are nevertheless accessed by them.
The governance challenge
- Regulation will have to align incentives to reduce issues of addiction, mental health, and overall safety.
- In absence of that, data hungry AI-based digital services can readily deploy opaque algorithms and dark patterns to exploit impressionable young people.
- Among other things this can lead to tech-based distortions of ideal physical appearance(s) which can trigger body image issues.
- Other malicious threats emerging from AI include misinformation, radicalisation, cyberbullying, sexual grooming, and doxxing.
- The next generation of digital nagriks must also grapple with the indirect effects of their families’ online activities.
- While moving into adolescence we must equip young people with tools to manage the unintended consequences.
- For instance, AI-powered deep fake capabilities can be misused to target young people wherein bad actors create morphed sexually explicit depictions and distribute them online.
- Beyond this, India is a melting pot of intersectional identities across gender, caste, tribal identity, religion, and linguistic heritage.
- Internationally, AI is known to transpose real world biases and inequities into the digital world.
- Such issues of bias and discrimination can impact children and adolescents who belong to marginalised communities.
- AI regulation must improve upon India’s approach to children under India’s newly minted data protection law.
- The data protection framework’s current approach to children is misaligned with India’s digital realities.
- It transfers an inordinate burden on parents to protect their children’s interests and does not facilitate safe platform operations and/or platform design.
- Confusingly, it inverts the well-known dynamic where a significant percentage of parents rely on the assistance of their children to navigate otherwise inaccessible user interface and user experience (UI/UX) interfaces online.
- It also bans tracking of children’s data by default, which can potentially cut them away from the benefits of personalisation that we experience online.
Shifting the emphasis
- International best practices can assist Indian regulation to identify standards and principles that facilitate safer AI deployments.
- UNICEF’s guidance for policymakers on AI and children identifies nine requirements for child-centred AI which draws on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (India is a signatory).
- The guidance aims to create an enabling environment which promotes children’s well-being, inclusion, fairness, non-discrimination, safety, transparency, explainability and accountability.
- Another key feature of successful regulation will be the ability to adapt to the varying developmental stages of children from different age groups.
- California’s Age Appropriate Design Code Act serves as an interesting template.
- The Californian code pushes for transparency to ensure that digital services configure default privacy settings; assess whether algorithms, data collection, or targeted advertising systems harm children; and use clear, age-appropriate language for user-facing information.
- Indian authorities should encourage research which collects evidence on the benefits and risks of AI for India’s children and adolescents.
- This should serve as a baseline to work towards an Indian Age Appropriate Design Code for AI.
- Lastly, better institutions will help shift regulation away from top-down safety protocols which place undue burdens on parents.
Conclusion
- As we move towards a new law to regulate harms on the Internet, and look to establish our thought leadership on global AI regulation, the interests of our young citizens must be front and centre.
Editorial 2: What are the findings of the Parliament panel on NEP?
Context
- The Parliament Standing Committee on Education tabled a report during the special session of Parliament on the “Implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 in Higher Education.”
About
- The panel met representatives of various State governments, Union Ministries, higher education institutions and other stakeholders to prepare the report.
- The report noted that of the 1,043 universities functioning in the country, 70% are under the State Act and that 94% of students are in State or private institutions with just 6% of students in Central higher educational institutions, stressing the importance of States in providing higher education.
The issues
- The 31-member panel tried to discuss issues such as the rigid separation of disciplines, limited access to higher education in socio-economically disadvantaged areas, lack of higher education institutes (HEIs) that teach in local languages, the limited number of faculty, lack of institutional autonomy, lesser emphasis on research, ineffective regulatory system and low standards of undergraduate education.
- The panel said that by 2030, every district in the country should have at least one multidisciplinary HEI and that the Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education, including vocational education, should be increased from 26.3% in 2018 to 50% by 2035.
The recommendations
- The panel asked the Union Government and the State Governments to take actions such as earmarking suitable funds for the education of Socially and Economically Disadvantaged Groups (SEDGs), setting clear targets for higher Gross Enrolment Ratio for SEDGs, enhancing gender balance in admissions to HEIs, providing more financial assistance and scholarships to SEDGs in both public and private HEIs, making admission processes and curriculum more inclusive, increasing employability potential of higher education programmes and for developing more degree courses taught in regional languages and bilingually.
- The panel also recommended specific infrastructural steps to help physically challenged students and a strict enforcement of all no-discrimination and anti-harassment rules.
- The Committee appreciated the manner in which the NEP was implemented in Jammu and Kashmir.
- It said that the Union Territory was among the first in the country to implement NEP from the academic session 2022 in all its higher educational institutions.
- The panel said it witnessed a paradigm shift in the methods of teaching, leading to lifelong learning opportunities to students.
The funding
- The Committee suggested improving the effectiveness and impact of the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) in funding HEIs.
- It asked the HEFA to diversify its funding sources beyond government allocations and explore partnerships with private sector organisations, philanthropic foundations, and international financial institutions.
- It recommended reviewing and adjusting the interest rates on loans provided by HEFA “to make them more competitive and affordable” for HEIs.
The multiple entry multiple exit programme
- The panel said that Indian institutions were likely to face several issues in implementing the multiple entry and multiple exit (MEME) system.
- The panel said while the MEME looked like a flexible system, which was being operated by Western educational institutions effectively, it might not work well in the country.
- If institutions allow MEME, it would be very difficult for the institutions to predict how many students would exit and how many would join midway.
- Since institutions would not know the in- and out-traffic, it will certainly disturb the pupil-teacher ratio,” the report noted.
Conclusion
- The report looked at the salient features of the NEP’s implementation in the higher education sector and the progress made so far.