Category: Ranker Webinars

Context

• India has recently been elected as the new chair of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI).
• In the election for the Council Chair, India received more than a two-thirds majority of the first-preference votes and was followed by Canada and the US, respectively.

In this article, we shall examine how Artificial Intelligence can be a game changer for India.

What is GPAI?

• GPAI is an international and multi-stakeholder initiative to guide the responsible development and use of AI, grounded in human rights, inclusion, diversity, innovation, and economic growth.
• Its establishment was announced during the 2018 G7 Summit by Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron. GPAI was officially launched on June 15, 2020
• It is the league of leading economies including India, USA, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, and Singapore.
• GPAI will be supported by a Secretariat, to be hosted by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, as well as by two Centers of Expertise- one each in Montreal and Paris.

What makes it a special initiative?

• First of its kind: GPAI is the first initiative of its type for evolving better understanding of the challenges and opportunities around AI using the experience and diversity of participating countries.
• Collaboration: In order to achieve this goal, the initiative will look to bridge the gap between theory and practice on AI by supporting cutting-edge research and applied activities on AI-related priorities.

Aims and Objectives

• In collaboration with partners and international organizations, GPAI will bring together leading experts from industry, civil society, governments, and academia to collaborate to promote the responsible evolution of AI.
• It will also help evolve methodologies to show how AI can be leveraged to better respond to the global crisis since COVID-19.

Themes of working

1. Responsible AI: RAI’s mandate aligns closely with that vision and GPAI’s overall mission, striving to foster and contribute to the responsible development, use and governance of human-centred AI systems, in congruence with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
2. Data governance: It  aims to collate evidence, shape research, undertake applied AI projects and provide expertise on data governance, to promote data for AI being collected, used, shared, archived and deleted in ways that are consistent with human rights, inclusion, diversity, innovation, economic growth, and societal benefit.
3. Future of work: Its mandate is to conduct critical technical analysis on how the deployment of AI can affect workers and working environments as well as how workers and employers can better design the future of work.
4. Innovation and commercialization: Its mandate is to study and recommend tools and methods to drive international collaboration on AI R&D and innovation,

About Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• AI is a constellation of technologies that enable machines to act with higher levels of intelligence and emulate the human capabilities of sense, comprehend and act.
• Thus, computer vision and audio processing can actively perceive the world around them by acquiring and processing images, sound and speech.
• Natural language processing and inference engines can enable AI systems to analyze and understand the information collected.
• An AI system can also take action through technologies such as expert systems and inference engines or undertake actions in the physical world.
• These human-like capabilities are augmented by the ability to learn from experience and keep adapting over time.
• AI  systems are finding ever-wider application to supplement these capabilities across various sectors.

Potential of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to provide huge value to different sectors and can become a key source of competitive advantage for firms.

(1) Healthcare: Helps address the issue of access to healthcare facilities, particularly in rural areas that suffer from poor connectivity and the limited supply of healthcare professionals.

(2) Agriculture

• It can address challenges such as inadequate demand prediction, lack of assured irrigation, and overuse/misuse of pesticides and fertilizers.
• Improves crop yield through real-time advisory, advanced detection of pest attacks, and prediction of crop prices to informed sowing practices.

(3) Smart Mobility, including Transports and Logistics

• Autonomous fleets for ride sharing,
• Semi-autonomous features such as driver assist, and
• Predictive engine monitoring and maintenance.

(4) Retail

To improve user experience and sale through:

• personalized suggestions,
• preference-based browsing
• image-based product search
• customer demand anticipation
• improved inventory management  
• efficient delivery management

(5) Manufacturing: To create a flexible and adaptable technical system to automate processes and machinery to respond to unfamiliar or unexpected situations by making smart decisions.

(6) Energy: Energy system modelling and forecasting to decrease unpredictability and increase efficiency in power balancing and usage.

(7) Smart Cities: Integration of AI in smart cities and infrastructure help meet the demands of a rapidly urbanizing population and provides enhanced quality of life.

(8) Education and Skilling

• Improving the learning experience through personalized learning,
• automating and expediting administrative tasks, and
• Predicting the need for student intervention to reduce dropouts or recommend vocational training.

AI and Climate change

• AI is a disruptive paradigm that has greater potential to assess, predict, and mitigate the risk of climate change with the efficient use of data, learning algorithms, and sensing devices.
• It performs a calculation, makes predictions, and takes decisions to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
• By developing effective models for weather forecasting and environmental monitoring, AI makes us better understand the impacts of climate change across various geographical locations.
• It interprets climatic data and predicts weather events, extreme climate conditions, and other socio-economic impacts of climate change and precipitation.
• From a technical perspective, AI offers better climatic predictions, shows the impacts of extreme weather, finds the actual source of carbon emitters and includes numerous other reasonable contributions. 
• This enables the policymakers to be aware of the rising sea levels, earth hazards, hurricanes, temperature change, disruption to natural habitats, and species extinction.

Applications of AI for Climate Change mitigation

The following are the few areas in which AI can directly help mitigate the risks posed by climate change:-

• AI-assisted prediction models for climate change mitigation
• Role of machine vision in climate informatics and forecasting
• Recent trends in AI to reduce carbon footprints for a sustainable environment
• AI for earth hazard management
• AI to promote eco-friendly energy production and consumption
• AI-assisted expert systems for climate change risk prediction and assessment
• AI-assisted big data analytics Synergy of IoT, big data, cloud computing, and AI techniques in climate change prediction and mitigation
• Machine learning for a sustainable green future
• AI in reducing the impacts of global warming
• Deep learning for sustainable earth surveillance and earth informatics

India’s AI Potential

• AI is expected to add US $967 billion to Indian economy by 2035 and US $450–500 billion to India’s GDP by 2025, accounting for 10 per cent of the country’s USD 5 trillion GDP target.
• It is pertinent to note that India has recently launched the National AI Strategy and National AI Portal.
• It has also started leveraging AI across various sectors such as education, agriculture, healthcare, e-commerce, finance, telecommunications, etc. with inclusion and empowerment of human being approach by supplementing growth and development.
• By joining GPAI as a founding member, India will actively participate in the global development of Artificial Intelligence, leveraging upon its experience around the use of digital technologies for inclusive growth.

Way forward

• Citizens should be brought to the table during the process of policymaking.
• It will open the door to collective intelligence.
• Also, there should be an effort from companies, ML practitioners and researchers.
• Finally, governments should take measures to revisit policies.  

Click and get your FREE Copy of CURRENT AFFAIRS Micro Notes

(Click) FREE1-to-1 on-call Mentorship by IAS-IPS officers | Discuss doubts, strategy, sources, and more

Question of the day: Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in India can become suitable agents for public service delivery. Discuss. (15 marks- 250 words) 

Join this telegram group:

We call this daily answer writing as Daily Answer Wars. Apart from this we also do Daily Check-ins making your daily Timetable and in Night owl discussions, we discuss important terms in news. 

The essence of CD War Zone

With Daily Answer Wars and Night Owl Discussions our aim is to ensure that you write and discuss themes/topics/terms that have a very high probability of appearing in the exam. 

Writing is a whole different ball game. When you sit down to write, it’s an entirely different process. It’s about streamlining your thinking, and your ideas. You might be thorough with a concept but you might fail to pen it down. That’s worse than not having ideas at all. Moreover, when we all sit together and write an answer, we get access to various unexplored dimensions. By doing a Peer Review, you can add those dimensions to your War Notes. These War Notes will come handy when you would be revising your Mains notes. 

When you discuss, you will almost always discover new concepts in the process. There is no substitute for this kind of discovery. Talking with others is a good way to develop a deeper understanding and ensure you retain better. Retention is everything. When you share with your fellow Aspirants regarding Academic and Non-Academic issues of the UPSC Exam, you get the best solutions to those problems. 

So many aspirants just keep looking for content and hoard all kinds of PDFs. At Civilsdaily we don’t believe such PDFs are helpful at all. You need to be on a path of discovery and be actively involved. If you are a serious aspirant, you can’t afford to just consume information. That is why our emphasis is on the Notes(read War Notes) that you yourself prepare in this process. We Believe every Answer has the potential to become a Model Answer, rather than giving you a Model Answer, we help you make your Answers a Model answer. 

Join the Civilsdaily Telegram Group to become a part of an extremely Positive and Vibrant UPSC Community.

Here is how we start the day 

Daily Check-in 

Daily Answer Wars 

Daily Answer Wars Result 

Night owl discussions

Join the telegram group here:

Context

• The Supreme Court has issued notice to the Centre Govt on a plea by two gay couples seeking recognition of same-sex marriage under the Special Marriage Act, 1954.
• The petition drew on earlier landmark rulings including one declaring privacy a fundamental right and another that decriminalized gay sex in 2018.
• Centre has to now file its response on this matter before the Supreme Court in four weeks.

What is Same-Sex Marriage?

• Same-sex marriage is marriage between partners of the same sex and/or gender identity.
• For example, a marriage between two men or two women.
• In the west, it is considered a civil partnership as a legally registered relationship which offers same sex couples rights similar to those of married couples of the opposite sex.

Judicial basis for same-sex marriage: Decriminalization of IPC section 377

Ans. Navtej Singh Johar & Ors. V. Union of India (2018)

• In this landmark verdict, the Supreme Court today scrapped the controversial Section 377– a 158-year-old colonial law on consensual gay sex.
• Section 377, which is part of an IPC 1861, banned “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal” — which was interpreted to refer to homosexual sex.
• The Supreme Court reversed its own decision and said Sectuion 377 is irrational and arbitrary.
• The judgment was delivered by a Bench of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices Rohinton Nariman, AM Khanwilkar, DY Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra.

Centre’s earlier stance

• Directly opposed: In 2021 central Government had opposed same sex marriage in Delhi High Court citing it against the provisions of the Special Marriage Act, 1954.
• Considers biological gender: It stated that a marriage in India can be recognised only if it’s between a biological man and biological woman capable of producing progeny.
• Societal morality clause: In its argument then Central govt had also said that considerations of “societal morality” are relevant in considering the validity of a law.
• Claiming responsibility: It argued that, it is for the Legislature to enforce such societal morality and public acceptance based upon Indian ethos.

Reasons behind centre’s opposition

• Legal revamp required: The registration of marriage of same-sex persons also results in a violation of existing personal as well as codified law provisions — such as ‘degrees of prohibited relationship’; ‘conditions of marriage’; ‘ceremonial and ritual requirements’ under the personal laws governing the individuals”.
• Definition of spouse: In a same-sex marriage, it is neither possible nor feasible to term one as ‘husband’ and the other as ‘wife’ in the context of the legislative scheme of various personal laws.
• Against cultural norms:  The social order in our Country is religion based which views procreation as an obligation for the execution of various religious ceremonies.
• Property and other civil rights: Property rights post marriage is a much contested issues in India. Same sex marriage will not create any immunity for the law but increase complex interpretations.

Issues with such marriages

The issue of homosexual conduct to this fore in recent legal and political debate for main reasons, which are as follows:

• Morality: This has brought with it a change in social attitudes, so that the stigma attached to the homosexuality has to a greater extent disappeared.
• Rising activism: Campaigns for lesbian and gay rights taken on an increasingly radical character, arguing for an end to all forms of discrimination against homosexuality.
• Religious sanctions: Same sex acts are punishable by death in Arab countries. No religion openly embraces same sex marriage. More or less, they are considered un-natural everywhere.
• Social stigma:  Apart from the harsh legal scenario, homosexuals face social stigma as well. Same sex marriages are still unimaginable as any instance of sexual relations between a couple of the same sex draws hatred and disgust.  
• Patriarchy: It must not be forgotten that the Indian society is patriarchal in nature and the fact that certain women and men have different choices, which is not sanctioned by the ‘order’, frightens them in a way.
• Burden of collectivity: Our society is very community oriented and individualism is not encouraged in the least, any expression of homosexuality is seen as an attempt to renounce tradition and promote individualism.

Arguments in favor

• Pursuit of happiness: Homosexuality is not an offence, it is just a way of pursuit of happiness, a way to achieve sexual happiness or desire.
• Right to privacy: The fundamental right to liberty (under Article-21) prohibits the state from interfering with the private personal activities of the individual.
• Arbitrariness: Infringement of, the right to equal protection before law requires the determination of whether there is a rational and objective basis to the classification introduced.
• Issues with definition: Section-377 assumes that natural sexual act is that which is performed for procreation. Hence, it thereby labels all forms of non-procreative sexual act as unnatural.
• Discrimination: Section-377 discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation which is forbidden under Article-15 of the Constitution. Article-15 prohibits discrimination on several grounds, which includes Sex.
• Human rights: The universal law of Human Rights states that social norms, tradition, custom or culture cannot be used to curb a person from asserting his fundamental and constitutional rights.
• Many countries recognizing: According to global think tank Council of Foreign Relations, same sex marriages are legal in at least 30 countries, including the United States, Australia, Canada and France.

Way forward

• Dissociating from religion: Such marriages are forbidden in almost every religion. Hence no single religion should be considered a hindrance in creating a legal sanction.
• Doing away with discrimination: The same-sex community needs an anti-discrimination law that empowers them to build productive lives and relationships irrespective of gender identity.   
• Letting the society evolve: The society has to imbibe the doctrine of progressive realization of rights and it cannot be forcibly convinced by law.
• Creating awareness: Certainly this is not an overnight phenomenon. We are society where practice of Sati and Nikah halala was considered a religious order.

Conclusion

• What should be the right approach to deal with same sex marriages, the issues are quite vast and complex.
• However, the desirability and feasibility of such an approach remain to be ascertained.

Click and get your FREE Copy of CURRENT AFFAIRS Micro Notes

(Click) FREE1-to-1 on-call Mentorship by IAS-IPS officers | Discuss doubts, strategy, sources, and more

CD war zone is an initiative started by Civils daily IAS, it is a community where we are collectively writing answers on a daily basis, apart from doing various other productive activities, like doing Daily Check-in, making timetables, discussing current affairs and likewise.

Why CD War zone? 

1) Primarily because of Daily Answer Writing, we call it Daily Answer wars. Here we give you one question daily early in the morning, after that Aspirants submit their Answers, Aspirants get to Peer review each other answers as well. In the evening our mentor comes with the feedback of the answer. 

Join the telegram group here : https://t.me/cdwarzone

Why are we writing only one answer?

(https://www.civilsdaily.com/cd-warzone-daily-answer-writing-for-upsc-mains/) 

2) Aspirants get to make  “War Notes”, these War notes will help you with UPSC Mains Preparation.

3) Aspirants become a part of a Close- knit community, who are disciplined and motivated enough to prepare for  UPSC CSE exam. 

4) Active mentors of Civilsdaily who are there to solve your UPSC related queries. 

Here is how we start the day 

Daily Check-in 

Daily Answer Wars 

Daily Answer Wars Result 

Night owl discussions

Join the telegram group here : https://t.me/cdwarzone