Workshop | Unintended Impacts of GenAI in India

With support from the Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, we hosted a workshop on the unintended impacts of Generative AI in India at our studio space in Goa as part of the Speculative Friction project.

The workshop brought together experts and practitioners from ‘tech for social good’ organisations such as People+AI, Wadhwani AI, Digital Green, Adalat AI, and Empower Panchayat, along with thinkers and researchers from the fields of tech policy, social welfare, and media, to engage in an open and free exchange of ideas.

The group participated in foresight exercises to explore short and long-term consequences of GenAI use cases in agriculture, healthcare, local governance, and the judiciary.

Summary of roundtable discussion:

• The general attitude toward GenAI adoption in India is optimistic, focusing on its potential productivity gains. However, participants agreed that the end user’s abilities to leverage this potential depend on their level of digital literacy and ability to engage with it as intended.
• Participants viewed AI, including GenAI, as a technology of last resort, that is, it should not be the first or default technology to be incorporated in interventions and schemes that provide critical social services and information. In many cases, especially in a development context, technology distracts from systemic issues - many of which require complex solutions.
• The negative unintended impacts of GenAI use may be intentional, masked by the rhetoric of uncertainty and an inability to foresee future consequences. This is akin to how social media companies continue to capture the attention of social media users through harmful practices because the success of these platforms depends on end users’ addiction to using the platforms.

The overall discussion on challenges of widespread GenAI included environmental consequences, the role of GenAI in amplifying social and wealth inequalities, and the harms that may arise as humans form emotional relationships with GenAI companion applications.

The workshop then focused on co-creating a consequence mapping exercise in four key sectors identified for the exercise - Agriculture, Healthcare, Local Governance, and Judiciary. The participants conducted the exercise in breakout sessions and shared notes about their findings after.