Author : Commander Subhasish Sarangi, The rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have such widespread implications that it is time to consider AI development, funding and implementation as a national imperative. AI technology is expected to drive transformations across the economy as well as national security. On 25 Aug 2017, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry constituted the “Task Force on AI for India’s Economic Transformation”[1]. The 18 member Task Force, chaired by Professor V Kamakoti of IIT (Madras), consisted of experts from academia, research laboratories and industry. In addition, the Task Force also had government officials from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of External Affairs and DRDO[2]. The Task Force submitted its report on 19 January 2018[3]. It suggested the creation of a National AI Mission as a nodal agency for coordinating AI related activities in India, with a budgetary allocation of ?1200 crores over five years. It identified ten domains for AI development in India that includes national security. In the domain-specific analysis, it has listed the possible areas for AI based systems in national security as autonomous surveillance and combat systems, adaptive communication systems, cyber attack mitigation and counter-attack systems, and multi-sensor data fusion based decision making systems. The report has an array of recommendations that include setting up of Centres of Excellence, setting up a generic AI test bed for developers, creation of an interdisciplinary data centre for interpretation of data, drafting of standards, and skill development. It states that the “most important challenge in India is to collect, validate, standardise, correlate, archive and distribute AI related data and making it accessible to organisations, peoples and systems without compromising privacy and ethics. Data is the bedrock of AI systems and reliability of AI systems depends primarily on quality and quantity of the data”.[4] On 02 February 2018, the Department of Defence Production (of the Ministry of Defence) constituted a Task Force to study the future use of AI in defence applications. Known as the Task Force for ‘Strategic Implementation of AI for National Security and Defence’, it was headed by Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran. The other 16 members in the Task Force included National Cyber Security Coordinator Gulshan Rai, Chairman & Managing Director of Bharat Electronics Ltd., and representatives from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Indian Space Research Organisation, Atomic Energy Commission, Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore), IIT (Bombay), IIT (Madras) and private industry. The terms of reference included study of use of AI by other leading nations, study the level of AI development in India in general and for defence needs, make recommendations for making India a significant power of AI in defence covering offensive and defensive needs, make recommendations for policy and institutional interventions, make recommendations for partnership with industry, recommendations for Request For Interests (RFIs)  to be floated in the next two years, and recommendations for funding[5]. After meetings on 10 February 2018 and 28 April 2018, one of the opinions that emerged was that there was a need to list down the ‘Use Cases’ for which data needs to be generated for AI development. ‘Use Case’ is a software and System Engineering term that describes how a user uses a system to accomplish a particular goal. A Workshop of all stakeholders was organised on 21 May 2018 for formulation of Use Cases. Consequently, the Use Cases were listed under various ‘Functional Areas’[6]. For civilian use, the Functional Areas were Personnel, Supply Chain & Logistics, Predictive Maintenance, and Finance & Accounting. For Military use, the Functional Areas were Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS), Unmanned Surveillance, and Simulated War Game & Training. For dual use, the Functional areas were Cybersecurity, Aerospace Security, and Intelligence & Reconnaissance. The Task Force submitted its report to the Raksha Mantri (RM) on 30 June 2018[7].  Based on the recommendations of the Task Force, the Department of Defence Production issued a government order on 08 February 2019 that listed the specific steps to be taken[8]. A High Level Defence AI Council (DAIC) will be constituted with RM as the Chairman. The DAIC shall convene twice every year. The other members will include the three Service Chiefs, the Defence Secretary, Secretary (Defence Production), Secretary DRDO, Financial Adviser (Defence Services), National Cyber Security Coordinator, and eminent representatives from industry and academia. The DAIC will provide the strategic direction towards AI driven transformation in defence; provide guidance in addressing issues related to data sharing; enable strategic partnership with industry; decide acquisitions of technology; review ethical, safe and privacy assured usage of AI in defence; and set policies in partnership with government institutions and industries. A Defence AI Project Agency (DAIPA) will also be established with Secretary (Defence Production) as the Chairman. The other members will be from the Service Headquarters, Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff, Defence Public Sector Units, DRDO, industry and academia. The DAIPA will be responsible for taking all steps enumerated in the government order. Each Service Headquarters has been directed to earmark ?100 crores for AI specific application development in each year for next five years from their annual budgetary allocations. A budgetary allocation of ?100 crores will be made every year for the next five years to DAIPA for implementation of the recommendations of the AI Task Force. In addition to these budgetary directives, the government order reiterates the general points of integrating AI into India’s Defence strategy, building capacity within defence organisations through research and development, providing training in AI in defence training and academic institutions, and creating a critical mass of AI specialists within defence organisations by encouraging higher studies in AI. In the Year End Review of 2018 of the Ministry of Defence, the Indian Navy has indicated that it has divided the AI Use Cases into short, medium and long term goals for implementation. It is also progressing four AI based proof-of-concept projects[9]. In reply to a question in Parliament, the Raksha Rajya Mantri listed two AI projects underway – a Signal Intelligence solution being developed by Centre for AI and Robotics (CAIR) and development of an Automated Human Intrusion Detection System[10]. MoD has also commenced conducting the Defence India Startup Challenge (DISC) in which firms respond to challenges posed by the three Services and are funded to develop their proposed solutions. Meanwhile, the national effort for use of AI for social sectors and industry are being progressed by Niti Aayog and the Ministry of Electronics and IT. Niti Aayog, Intel and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) have collaborated to set up a Model International Centre for Transformative AI (ICTAI) at Bangalore[11]. A National AI Centre is expected to be commissioned in July this year.   End Note [1] Press Information Bureau (PIB), Government of India, Commerce and Industry Minister Sets up Task Force on Artificial Intelligence for Economic Transformation, 25 August 2017. [2] Details available in website www.aitf.org.in. [3] Press Information Bureau (PIB), Government of India, Finalisation of National Artificial intelligence Mission, 25 July 2018. [4] Report of the Artificial Intelligence Task Force, accessed from www.aitf.org.in on 18 April 2019. [5] Press Information Bureau (PIB), Government of India, Raksha Mantri Inaugurates Workshop on AI in National Security and Defence, 21 May 2018. [6] ibid. [7] Press Information Bureau (PIB), Government of India, AI Task Force hands over final report to RM, 30 June 2018. [8] Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence, Implementation of the recommendations of the multi-stakeholder task Force constituted by Ministry of defence for ‘Strategic Implementation of AI for National Security and Defence’, GoI Order 8(19)/2018-D(Coord/DPP), 08 February 2019. Accessed from https://ddpmod.gov.in/ on 18 April 2019. [9] Press Information Bureau (PIB), Government of India, Year End Review – 2018 Ministry of Defence, 31 December 2018. [10] Press Information Bureau (PIB), Government of India, Artificial intelligence, 02 January 2019. [11] Press Information Bureau (PIB), Government of India, NITI Aayog, Intel and TIFR collaborate to set up a Model International Center for Transformative AI (ICTAI), 11 September 2018.   @ Cdr Subhasish Sarangi is a Research Scholar at the United Service Institution of India (USI). Article uploaded on 25 Apr 2019 Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the organisation that he belongs to or of the USI.