CHENNAI, India — A nation blessed with a strong tech industry, India is applying its brainpower not only to commercial artificial intelligence (AI) but also to the military, even as neighboring and regional rival China continues to pour billions of dollars into AI research.
India is spending about $50 million a year on AI, according to a 2023 report by the Delhi Policy Group, an Indian think tank. The report noted: He said that while India’s spending was a “good first step,” it was “clearly inadequate compared to its main strategic rival, China, which is spending more than 30 times this amount. It needs to make larger investments to keep up with technology cycles, primarily to promote domestic industry players.”
Antoine Levesque, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), told Fox News Digital that India is “undertaking its own efforts to build a sovereign AI capability that can be used for its defence”.
“India has very ambitious plans,” he added. He said India will need to acquire foreign chips to “boost its AI hardware capabilities,” noting that “India’s tech industry is already rich in talent.”
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The Indian Army’s Eastern Command showcased its latest defensive artillery robot at East Tech 2023 in Guwahati, Assam, India, on October 10, 2023. (David Talukdar/NurPhoto via The Associated Press)
In October, the military launched a robotic companion that can traverse rough terrain for reconnaissance, remove unexploded ordnance, and even act as a stretcher for wounded soldiers. The robot has two arms and two cameras, as well as a platform that carries two more cameras. The robot is manually operated by a controller on the ground. The military may develop the technology further. The country’s navy is also believed to have autonomous underwater robots that can go places humans cannot.
“The battery-powered platform is built to withstand rough terrain and measures one metre by one metre,” an Indian military official said. Times of India.
The Signals Technology Evaluation and Adaptation Group (STEAG), an elite unit of the Indian Army, studies and evaluates the implementation of emerging technologies such as AI and other potential updates in the ever-evolving arena of modern warfare.
be Analysis by LévesqueIndia and the US have partnered in the AI space and continue to do so.
At a 2022 meeting, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh at the 9th ADMM (Asean Defence Ministers Meeting), and AI was one of the topics discussed. Also that year, U.S. President Biden and Indian Prime Minister Modi announced a partnership known as the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies.
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Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh attends the Artificial Intelligence in Defence Exhibition at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi, India on July 11, 2022. (Arvind Yadav/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)
Levesque said India’s tech industry has a wealth of talent, and while India may have a slight advantage in terms of “talent abundance” due to its stronger English proficiency, “it’s not enough to match China’s capabilities.”
“Both adopting American technology and developing indigenous technology take time,” he added, noting that India is working on both in the economic and defense sectors.
“Generative AI, in particular, based on large-scale language models, is rapidly advancing common operational understanding that militaries can use for intelligence gathering to understand what’s happening on the battlefield,” Patrick Cronin, Asia-Pacific security director at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, told Fox News Digital.
Indian Army soldiers, CRPF and JK Police officers stand on alert as security is stepped up ahead of the fifth phase of voting in India’s Lok Sabha elections in Baramulla, Jammu and Kashmir, India, on May 19, 2024. (Nasir Kachroo/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
AI could help keep tabs on foreign nations like Pakistan and China. Cronin explained that, similar to ChatGPT (also a type of generative AI), the technology could be used to inform real-time simulations and exercises, bringing insight into what might happen.
It has potential military uses in three areas: intelligence, training, and education.
“China has a robot army of autonomous drones,” Cronin warned, but still believes widespread adoption of “autonomous systems” in general is “five to 10 years away.”
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In this file photo released by Xinhua News Agency on April 12, 2018, Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks after inspecting a People’s Liberation Army Navy fleet in the South China Sea. (Li Gang/Xinhua News Agency via The Associated Press, File)
Senior official of the Indian Ministry of Defence He told Deutsche Welle “The Indian military has been working closely with the government to ensure that the security of the border is protected,” said the statement.
Cronin pointed to concerns including the idea that AI, like other developing technologies, could be used for a variety of purposes, including malicious ones, such as using deepfakes to spread disinformation and other negativity.
Thousands of Indians and Chinese are studying artificial intelligence at universities abroad, and Cronin said he felt India had an advantage in civilian AI development, but China could not match it because of its more “centralized and better funded” military system.
Indian Army soldiers ride on a military vehicle crossing the Srinagar-Leh National Highway on September 1, 2020. (Faisal Khan/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“When you combine facial recognition with satellite imagery of distant battlefields and potentially lethal drones, you can do something easily today that wasn’t possible 30 or 40 years ago,” Cronin added.
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“The consequences of war remain horrific and tragic and need to be as ethical, precise, just and limited as possible. India can potentially play a leading role in the discussion on the expanding use of AI on the battlefield and throughout society. These issues are in the early stages of what could become the future laws of war and guardrails for a high-tech civilisation.”
The Indian military is furthering its ambitions and research in the field of AI to enable it to compete on equal terms with China.
