Union Minister for IT and Communications Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday dropped a big hint about an Indian version of ChatGPT. "Wait for a few weeks there will be a big announcement," the minister said while responding to a question on whether India can produce something equivalent to ChatGPT.
ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot, has created a storm for its ability to answer complex questions on a variety of topics. Some companies have already started exploring ways how they can use this technology - which is, in some cases, throwing results faster and better than humans.
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ChatGPT is created by OpenAI, which has got billions of dollars of investment from Microsoft. Google too has launched its AI-powered conversational tool, Bard.
On Monday, Vaishnaw hinted that the government may soon make some announcement on the Indian version of ChatGPT. When pressed further on what the announcement could be, he said: "Parliament is in session, so I cannot say anything."
Speaking there, Vaishnaw said India had taken rapid strides in areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing. He said while there was a time when India was only seen as a consumer of technology, now "many global developers like to have Indian start-ups, entrepreneurs, and academicians as their partners, as technology gets developed". "In these two technologies, we would like to use Indian talent for developing solutions for India and for the world," he said.
Recently, Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned of the consequences of an AI arms race between tech companies - like Google and Microsoft - fighting for domination in the search engine and browser market. "Sure would be ironic if civilizations ended because of a fight over browser/search market share," he said in a tweet.
Musk, who had initially invested in OpenAI, believes that the AI race between companies like ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard could result in the development of AI systems that are far more powerful than humans and are capable of making decisions that may not be in people's best interests.
His warning comes just weeks after OpenAI launched the GPT-4, the successor to the GPT-3. The GPT-4 is smarter, more efficient, and can potentially replace many professions. Last month, a survey showed that some US companies had already deployed the AI chatbot to do the work which was earlier done by workers.
According to a survey done by job advice platform Resumebuilder.com on 1,000 business leaders, almost half of the US companies that were a part of the survey have already implemented ChatGPT and as a result, it has replaced workers at their companies.