The controversy involving Galgotias University showcasing a Chinese-manufactured robot dog as its own product on February 17 at the India AI Impact Summit underway in Delhi calls to mind how “greenwashing” by giant corporations has been expanded to the current hype, artificial intelligence.
Many years ago, multinational companies discovered that sustainability was a buzzword, even as they were destroying forests, polluting rivers and seas, and their executives were flying in to work on private jets. But they had to tell their customers, as well as regulators and society at large, that they cared about the environment.
So corporations began promoting paper straws and cloth bags. They bought carbon credits and installed some solar facilities on their premises. They led tree-planting drives in cities while stripping large swathes of the Amazon and Sumatran forests. This practice is now known as “greenwashing,” where companies exaggerate their commitments to sustainability and the environment.
Now, companies have discovered a new and analogous practice: AI-washing. Here, they exaggerate artificial intelligence capabilities, often at great cost to their customers, investors and even society.
About 250 years ago, a Hungarian inventor named Wolfgang Von Klempen claimed to have invented a chess-playing automaton. He called it the Mechanical Turk. It could play chess and beat even the best players. People were stunned by what seemed like the first instance of artificial intelligence. But the Mechanical Turk was a hoax. The box concealed a chess player inside who was making all the moves.
There are many instances of the Mechanical Turk in the 21st century.
As far back as 2016, viral videos of Amazon’s Go stores took social media by storm. A customer could walk into an unmanned store, pick up stuff and walk out – an AI algorithm would track the customer and their purchases, billing their Amazon account automatically.
But in 2024, it was found that the Go Stores were actually being monitored by call-centre workers in India. In 2024, an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the team in India “helps train the model” and that associates “validate a small minority of shopping visits”.
Similarly, everyone’s favourite tech guru Elon Musk showcased his amazing autonomous robots – Tesla’s Optimus – at the We Robot event 2024. The robots were later revealed to be remote-controlled by humans.
The case of a high-profile startup called Engineer.ai tells the same story. The founders promised to leverage the power of AI to help users build websites without any coding knowledge. In 2019, it was found that developers in India were doing the job, not AI.
A few years later, Engineer.ai rebranded itself as Builder.ai, attracted even more millions of dollars in funding, this time claiming it would use AI to speed up app development. The company filed for bankruptcy in late 2024.
The Go Store and Builder.ai fiascos were pulled off with low-paid workers based in India.
India aspires to be part of the global AI revolution, but instead are Indians being relegated to the dark back-alleys of the ecosystem?
AI is a major buzzword in India right now.
State governments and entrepreneurs are announcing AI initiatives by the dozen. AI universities are promising to change the face of higher education. AI-powered cities promise to end problems of homelessness, segregation and sprawl. There is AI in disaster management, tourism and public transport.
Almost every Indian state has unveiled ambitious AI roadmaps and signed memorandums of understanding with leading organisations and philanthropic trusts. The press releases brim with buzzwords and jargon, but many claims feel like puffery – for now.
Then there have also been the familiar problematic themes and scientifically-questionable use-cases of artificial intelligence. The Maharashtra government in January claimed that it will use AI to detect “illegal” immigrants from Bangladesh. Graduates of India’s best technical colleges are developing AI-powered astrology apps for the superstitious, at valuations running into crores of rupees.
Teenagers are turning to AI chat bots for psychological help and counselling, often with disastrous consequences. Lawyers are using generative AI tools to prepare briefs, citing fake cases.
Rather than innovation, AI has successfully enabled fraudulent endeavours.
AI-generated fake invoices are as good as genuine ones – the technology has helped effect a paradigm shift in corporate reimbursement fraud. Some enterprising Indians are now using AI-generated photos of flies and insects in food to get free meals from food delivery platforms.
AI-generated research papers of questionable quality are inundating the peer review teams of academic journals, while school teachers and college professors are grading AI-generated assignments submitted by students. Deep-fake videos using AI have taken fake news to a whole new level.
Meanwhile, serious AI researchers and builders are toiling away doing unglamorous math on chalk boards, writing blocks of code on their laptops, and presenting their niche research in academic conferences and boring academic journals.
When AI-washers and their gimmicks take over the narrative, they compete with genuine players for funds, resources and attention. As dancing robot dogs take over the public imagination, priorities shift as well.
To the layperson and often the policymaker and politician, there is little difference between the serious AI stakeholder and the blowhard. The two share the same forums and the same media outlets, and their opinions are often juxtaposed alongside one another.
AI-washing is not uniquely an Indian phenomenon. But just like India’s space scientists and IT service providers, there is a lot more to prove than western counterparts, simply to stake our claim to legitimacy. Maybe it is time for some deep introspection and to separate the wheat from the chaff.
