Dark side of AI – Why Regulations can’t wait

In this technologically evolved world we have shifted from physical labour to machine related work. There is a huge human population shifting towards the IT sectors instead of agriculture or other work which are done manually. People were shifting towards IT sector from the early 20 but gradually as a time passed by there were creation of many inventions, artificial intelligence being one of them. Artificial intelligence is basically the development of the computers and machines to perform task that involves the intellectual learnings, intelligence, reasoning and problem solving capacity. It has made the day to day life of the human in any sector easier, you get answers in a simple conversation, also the issue of language barrier is solved as it can depict many languages. From coding to simple mathematics, from comprehending to reasoning, from IT sector related work to normal home related problems it has a solution to every problem that we get to face in our day to day life. AI is being loved by most of the people as it has made the work easier for everyone also there are many big firm that have embraced artificial intelligence to carry out day to day business. There are many top law firms that have embraced artificial intelligence to increase their productivity and to achieve higher quality and more accurate products and improve the client service by automating difficult work like document review and legal research which would require more workforce and a huge amount of time and capital investment so it provides a competitive advantage to the firms and companies in the long run in this competitive environment eventually bringing rapid transformation.

Although the artificial intelligence has proved to be a boon in this competitive world having all sort of intellectual knowledge about all the fields but still many critics site possible dangerous outcomes that might be associated with the artificial intelligence. They say that the artificial intelligence can collect all the personal datas related to us which are stored in our phone. They have time and again tried to enlighten us about the possible threats related to AI, as they can access the datas or the memories that are there in our phones or gadgades hence impeaching our privacy and this could also lead to possible data theft which would eventually lead to heavy losses. The critics express  that  AI could cause harm through autonomous weapons algorithm basis deeps and manipulation as well. Recently a case was circulating around the social media in which a women expressed her dismay and concern about safety related to AI. She said that she uploaded a photograph of her in a full sleeve but the AI generator photo which was sleeveless showed the mark on her left hand in the exact same place where she had in real. There were many reactions that were coming from all around the social media where people had theory that maybe the women had uploaded the photograph in a sleeveless dress before and the AI would have memorized the same but many believed that it might be possible that the AI could look into the album of the phone. So we do not know exactly what happened here and this is the same issue that would arise every time if there is no one to take the accountability of it.

As of now we do not have any specific AI related laws in our country which could put a check on the possible misuse of the AI. However the information technology act 2000 which is primarily applied legislation that governs the electronic transactions digital governance is sometimes used for the AI related activities by some of its provisions like section 43A  helps in the case of breach of data privacy when there is a negligent handling of sensitive personal data so AI system that process users data must ensure that they comply with this provision to avoid the legal repercussions, section 66D put an individual under penalty if they cheat by impersonating themselves using some computer resources and section 67 which prohibits the publishing on transmitting of the of scene material in electronic form. The section ensures that there are proper measures taken if the AI is misheld by the wrong hands. But unlike information technology AI has a broader areas where the data could be mishandles and needs to be covered. An advisory was published by meitY on first March 2024 which was amed at regulating unreliable AI models and it was said that the platform that intense 2 introduce these technology to the Indian public must ensure compliance with some directives which includes that they must not facilitates by a discrimination or violate the integrity of electoral process as this could somewhere violate the sovereignty of the country as well, second was that the AI model which which are deemed under tested must seek explicit permission from meitY before being deployed in the country the most important key points was that the AI generator media which includes text audios and videos must be labelled with unique identifiers or meta data this will allow the users to trace the origin of the content specially in the case of misinformation. I think the third key point is important as any content that would be created by the AI wouldn’t have any authority and without authority we won’t be able to punish the offender. We need the AI related rules at this juncture as if there won’t be any legislations then we won’t be able to keep a check on the artificial intelligence which could be a possible threat to the whole mankind in the near future.

Author: Pratyksha Priya., in case of any queries please contact/write back to us via email to [email protected] or at IIPRD.