Call for govt caution in AI regulation discourse

Indians are among the most innovative people in the world — until their government gets involved.

The libertarian commentator Gurcharan Das argued more than a decade ago that “India grows at night, when the government sleeps.” An entirely avoidable fracas about how to regulate artificial intelligence in India is evidence that Das’s maxim still applies today.

India hosts a vibrant ecosystem of infotech companies, ranging from scrappy startups to continent-spanning behemoths. All of them were blindsided a few days ago by a government advisory decreeing that companies would need official permission to deploy any AI models on the “Indian” internet.

The government, most concluded, had been spooked by the growth of large language models such as OpenAI Inc.’s ChatGPT — and especially the new Gemini AI model from Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Gemini’s answer to the question “is Prime Minister Narendra Modi a fascist?” went viral last week, enraging Indian officials. Although Google quickly apologised, the damage had been done.