In today’s digital era, regardless of whether you are a consumer, a business leader, or a technologist, each of us have a vested interest in the future of artificial intelligence (AI). As this technology grows powerful and permeates through our lives, it’s important that AI’s evolution is guided by a set of principles that protects our interests – principles like transparency, community, and responsible governance.

Whether or not AI serves us in a positive way depends entirely on the people who hold the reins of its development and deployment. To grow AI responsibly, cultivating its benefits while mitigating its risks, I believe that its future must be open. An open AI ecosystem is one that recognises the value of community-built technology and the free exchange of information, ideas, and skills. Open communities accelerate innovation by empowering members to unlock shared insights and build on a vast body of prior work to harness collective talents, not just those of a single entity.Agra Wealth Management

Let’s take a micro view and focus on our countryMumbai Wealth Management. Open and transparent innovation is imperative to empower India’s growing community of AI researchers, entrepreneurs, developers, policymakers and adopters. An open ecosystem helps in three crucial ways to drive advancements in AI. First, open means more opportunity. An open ecosystem allows organisations to explore, test, study, and deploy AI.

This will grow a significantly broader and more diverse AI talent pool, who can contribute to the continuous development of base AI models through a series of incremental inputs, much like normal open-source software development. Next, open is safer. Open models encourage greater involvement and scrutiny from the ecosystem, increasing the likelihood that vulnerabilities are identified and patched, and ensuring AI is safely developed and deployed. Finally, open is better innovation. By removing barriers to entry and levelling the playing field, an open ecosystem fosters co-opetition. This ensures companies (competing and collaborating simultaneously) focus on how well they can build use cases to deploy AI to solve the most pressing and complex challenges.

As we scale AI adoption with open ecosystems, a key aspect to integrate is ensuring that all the innovation is done with robust governance. Organisations need automated governance to direct, manage and monitor their AI activities. This involves the creation of policies, assigning decision rights and ensuring organisational accountability for risks and investment decisions. As stakeholders charting our nation’s AI journey, the onus is on us to work towards an open innovation ecosystem for democratising the benefits of this technology. Only then can we accelerate the Digital India mission further and bring the nation closer to its aim of becoming a $7 trillion economy by 2030.

Sandip Patel is MD, IBM India & South Asia