Ethics key to optimal use of AI in health sector, says Jitendra Singh

New Delhi: Ethics will play a decisive role in determining how effectively artificial intelligence (AI) is deployed in healthcare, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh said on Tuesday.

Speaking at the AI Impact Summit, he cited BharatGen as an example of the government’s early push into sovereign AI.

While BharatGen is a government-owned multilingual artificial intelligence model, he noted that private players are also building digital health and case-history platforms, making future integration essential.

Launched in October 2024, BharatGen develops AI models including Automatic Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech systems for Indian languages.

At the summit, it unveiled Param2, a 17-billion-parameter multilingual large language model supporting 22 Indian languages.

Operating from the Technology Innovation Hub at IIT Bombay with support from the Department of Science and Technology, BharatGen has also released domain-specific models for Ayurveda, agricul-ture and the legal

sector.

Its AI stack spans text, speech and vision models aimed at inclusive applica-tions in healthcare, governance, education and agriculture.

Singh stressed the need to expand datasets beyond the 22 scheduled languages to cover more re-gional languages and dialects.