India Wasting Money on Defence Budget While Future of War is Artificial Intelligence, Says Pakistan's Ex-Vice Admiral

A retired Vice Admiral of Pakistan has said that India is wasting money on it’s defence budget as the future of war is artificial intelligence (AI), reported Dawn, a Pakistan daily.

During a seminar tilted ‘Indian hegemonic design and its implications’, Arifullah Hussaini said,"I think India is wasting its money on defence. The future of war does not belong to conventional methods but artificial intelligence. Whosoever uses it well will win. Therefore, we have to learn artificial intelligence."

“This is the era of hybrid war which consists of multiple layers, including cyber warfare, conventional war, diplomacy, spread of fake news, foreign electoral intervention, etc.", he added.

Notably, what Hussaini said is quite right as a report on the effect of artificial intelligence on the US' national security predicted that AI could revolutionize wars as much as nuclear weapons. The report explains that improvements in AI and related technology may shake up balance of international power by making it easier for smaller nations and organizations to threaten big powers like the US.

Nuclear weapons may be easier than ever to build, but still require resources, technologies, and expertise while code and digital data used in AI-technologies tend to get cheap, or end up spreading around for free, fast. Machine learning has become widely used and image and facial recognition now crop up in science fair projects, said the report.

India, which has yet to launch a national policy on AI, is too late to have jump on artificial intelligence bandwagon as comparing to its next neighbor China, which stands second in the world when it comes to committing money for developing AI programmes. It has built a $2 billion research park dedicated to AI in western Beijing and its spending more millions on AI research at universities and private firms. The research community in China is also far more robust than in India.

Pakistan, on other hand, is far far behind in AI race in south-east Asia alone. The bad state of politics and terrorism is so high in the country a Pakistan media once sattired that amongst the jobs that will be killed by artificial intelligence is that of President of Pakistan, which is a head of state.

On a serious note, Pakistan do have handful of startups working in artificial intelligence such as ADDO AI, touted as Pakistan's first AI company, working in smart cities, microfinance and farming sector. Other than this most AI startup in the country is very mediocre and small utility based. And, none is contributing to defence sector or mechanism for that matter.

While in India, there are numerous startups working in defence area and even helping Indian army and defence personnel. However both India and Pakistan do not have any local AI firm of that big level as the US "Tony Stark-like firms", pun intended.

Speaking about India countering China in AI race, it has recently joined hands with Japan to launch robotics and artificial intelligence in the defense segment.

Moreover, Malcolm Frank, head of strategy of Cognizant, a world-leading professional services firm, said in an interview that India along with United States and China are way ahead of everyone else in the AI game and are currently the top three contenders for the numero uno throne.

Top Image - Guardianlv.com

Pakistani Startups Consider India As Their Silicon Valley

While the Indian Startup industry looks at the West (Silicon Valley) for inspiration, it seems the Pakistani Startup industry is doing the same, but for them India is their Silicon Valley. In terms of numbers and innovation, the Indian Startup Industry is way ahead of its Pakistani counterpart and acquires the third position globally in terms of numbers of startups, just behind the United States and United Kingdom.

Humayun Mazhar, a Pakistan based angel investor and the Vice President of TiE's Lahore chapter, recently visited India with an agenda of getting insights about the Indian startup ecosystem and its working, by interacting with a few Indian startup investors and entrepreneurs.

According to Mazhar, the Indian startup industry, which he describes as the "Silicon Valley for Pakistani startups," can prove to be a great inspiration for the Pakistani startup industry, which is still in its nascent stages.

The Indian Startup industry has had quite an adventurous journey over the years with a number of highs and lows, and finally acquiring the world number three position. This can prove to be a great case study for the Pakistani Startup industry.

Mazhar is a much famous personality in the Pakistani Startup Indian and has even launched his own venture fund CresVentures in October last year. So far, his company has invested in a total of 3 Pakistani startups. CresVentures most recent investment was Travly, an auto-hailing tech startup based in Pakistan. Travly is based on similar lines as the much popular Indian Startup Jugnoo.

The primary objective of Mazhar's Indian visit was to establish a network with several Indian angel investors, and to also meet some innovative, inspiring entrepreneurs on the way. Travel Khana's Pushpinder Singh was one of the entrepreneurs that Mazhar was able to interact with during this visit. Mazhar has been to India several times in the past and has had an interaction with a number of startups, entrepreneurs back then also.

While Pakistani startup ecosystem can surely look up to the Indian startup Indian for inspiration, it needs to make sure that its entrepreneurs don't end up copying its ideas blindly. One needs to understand that there are a number of cultural, technological differences between the countries, that's why there is a strong chance that what might be working well in India, might not even catch the interest of Pakistani people at all.

Easy Taxi, a Pakistani Startup modelled around Ola Cabs, is a perfect example of this. While Ola Cabs is doing phenomenally well in India, Easy Taxi couldn't extract the same excitement from the Pakistani citizens and closed down its operations in the country last year. There were two broad reasons for Easy Taxi's failure; the first one being, that Pakistani people were still very uncomfortable about hailing a cab, and secondly, the country didn't even have the 3G technology back then, which made accessing the app a task in itself.

One of the main reasons why the Pakistani Startup industry is currently trailing behind its Indian counterpart is the slow technological advancement in the country.

According to a statement given by Adam Ghaznavi, a Serial Pakistani entrepreneur to a national economic daily, "We are culturally behind the startup industry in India when it comes to technology and marketing. I feel we are still 3-5 years away from a synergistic startup eco system."

While experts predict that the Pakistani startup industry is currently almost two years behind the Indian startup industry, the scene is for sure going to change in a couple of years. The Pakistani startup industry has been witnessing a lot of action in the last couple of years with the coming of a number of incubators as well as sizeable foreign investments.

StartupDosti - An Indo-Pak Business Plan Tournament

Startup Dosti is a first and one of a kind platform for early age startups in India and Pakistan introduced by Indian Angel Network (IAN) - which is India's largest angel funding group in association with Karachi-London based SEED Ventures and the Washington DC based Atlantic Council. The program will help startups & entrepreneurs from both the countries to exchange markets, ideas, expertise and mentor-ship.

Each entrepreneurs/startups who take part in program will receive individually tailored, cross-border mentor-ship from experienced experts, successful entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders in both India and Pakistan, as well as the opportunity to earn seed funding, free incubation for 3 to 6 months in both countries, and access to a unique network of entrepreneurs to help execute their business idea.

[cp_quote style="quote_right_dark"]The business plan competition is open to early-stage startups based in India and Pakistan. Concept stage startups who are planning to start within 3-months of applying can also apply.[/cp_quote]

The applications for business plan competition will open from August 15, 2013 the day when India celebrates its Independence, the program will however kick-off from July onwards keeping in mind the complexities in getting visas and travelling to each others' countries especially when it comes to India-Pakistan.

The finale will than be organized in late 2013 in Thailand, again probably because of visa hurdles, the finals will invite top 8 to 10 business plan from each country and invite the respective entrepreneurs in person in Thailand and again possibly in Washington, DC for a dynamic follow-up dialogue and mentor-ship session in 2014.

The final round of the competition will feature business plan pitches to a panel of experienced investors from both countries and the diaspora. The pitches, mentoring, and follow–up sessions will all be produce a dynamic television series, in partnership with GEO TV in Pakistan and major media partners in India. The TV program will air in 2014 which GEO TV in Pakistan and Indian TV media partner is yet to be decided.

The supporting organization includes India's major accelerator and incubation centres such as - The Startup Centre (Chennai), Startup Village (Kochi), 91 Springboard (New Delhi) and Centre of Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship – IIM (Ahmedabad)