Privacy protections and consent-based data-sharing protocols will remain embedded in the framework, Garg said at a National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) workshop on the economics of AI and digital public infrastructure. The government is building an SBR, a centralised database of all business entities across the country. “Data is the raw material of AI. You can have energy, chips and models, but without data, AI is not there,” Garg said.
Data harmonisation has become the government’s next major focus in its digital public infrastructure agenda, he said, stressing that AI can only be as effective as the quality and consistency of the underlying data. While ministries can exchange information through APIs and digital platforms, the challenge lies in ensuring “semantic interoperability,” common definitions, classifications, identifiers and metadata across datasets, Garg said. -Our Bureau