India can be AI hub, policy set-up for tech can spur growth: Chandrasekaran

India can become the artificial intelligence (AI) capital of the world because of the talent pool and complex problems that it has, and a policy framework for the technology can accelerate development, Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran said on Friday.

He said AI can shape the future and direction of the country.

"India clearly has the potential to become the AI capital of the world. The reason I say this is not just because I am here in India and I love India and so on. We are in a sweet spot where we have talent and a kind of complexity that only AI can solve," Chandrasekaran said while speaking at RAISE Summit.

He said if India is able to solve the problems using AI, then the solutions can spread to developing as well as developed nations.

"For the coming decade to be India's decade, to my mind there are two challenges. On the one hand, solving the access challenge to make every service like healthcare, education available to every citizen irrespective of the place where they live..." Chandrasekaran said.

The other challenge is to provide meaningful and productive futuristic jobs for the vast population of India, he added.

"Right now the global digital economy is in fact headed towards a splintered future. That will limit the scalability and potential of entire platform economics because of issues related to data governance.

"Solving for data governance, specifically what should be the global standard for data residency -- localisation, privacy and security -- are very important steps for our long term success. I think developing a policy framework will accelerate development of AI and AI based solutions in a significant way," Chandrasekaran said.

He said AI and AI-based solutions, tools and technologies should not be put to use for the elite and instead should be used for the common man.

"This means our vision should not be centred around software professionals and data scientists and other white collar workers. But our vision should include farmers, truck drivers, shopkeepers, teachers and everyone else," Chandrasekaran said.

The government is looking to use AI for various applications including resolving language barriers that people of the country face while communicating, enhancing agriculture productivity, among others.

The National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (NSAI) had highlighted that the potential of AI in boosting India's annual growth rate by 1.3 percentage points by 2035 and identified priority sectors for deployment of AI with government's support.

Chandrasekaran said, "As the world's largest democracy and as a place where data is getting created at such a high volume and where there are many problems, all of which can be solved through AI, I really think India should seize the opportunity to lead this globally. We should not lose the momentum, but we should quickly get into execution.