With the homegrown AI market projected to cross $325 Bn in revenue by 2033, both the union and state governments are sharpening their focus on building enabling frameworks while addressing concerns around data privacy, job disruption, and infrastructure readiness. For Karnataka, the stakes are even higher. As the home of India’s startup capital, Bengaluru, the state is keen to retain its edge as the go-to destination for AI-led innovation.

Its approach goes beyond attracting investments, positioning AI as a lever to bridge the gap between policymaking and last-mile delivery. At the core of this vision is a shift from traditional e-governance to what the state terms “i-governance” or intelligent governance, where data-driven systems enable faster decision-making, proactive service delivery, and more responsive public administration. To understand how this is shaping up on the ground, Inc42 spoke with Priyank Kharge, Karnataka’s minister for electronics, IT, and biotechnology.

In this conversation, Kharge discusses the state’s early experiments with AI-led governance, its evolving policy thinking around responsible AI, efforts to attract global players, and the push to build a full-stack deeptech and supply chain ecosystem. Here are the edited excerpts: Inc42: In March, the Karnataka Government set up a committee for responsible AI. How do you think it would help in job security at a time when the market is plagued by mass layoffs due to AI?

Priyank Kharge: This is the first time I have been asked whether job security will be part of the responsible AI conversation. What we are actually focusing on is making our people more employable to ensure job security. To achieve that, we need to equip them with the right skill sets.

Our committee on responsible AI is checking how AI could be deployed within the governance, how public data should be managed, and the extent to which it can be used in innovation, staying within the limits of data privacy and the use of AI in sensitive sectors like life sciences. The panel comprises experts like technologists, legal professionals, and academicians. As a state, it is important for us to be policy-ready.

We have had a few meetings, and we expect them to come up with a comprehensive framework in the next couple of months. Inc42: How does the state plan to implement AI in its citizen-facing initiatives? Priyank Kharge: We are in the testing phase across several use cases.

In grievance management, for example, we are deploying a semi-autonomous chatbot with agentic capabilities to assist both citizens and administrators. In e-governance, we are piloting AI to detect whether submitted images have been manipulated, for instance, in crop loss assessments. Similarly, in livestock census efforts, we are exploring technologies like nose-print recognition, since each animal has a unique identifier.

We are also looking at how AI can help reduce procedural complexity within departments and improve the delivery of citizen services. This is a work-in-progress. I believe the era of (traditional) e-governance is gone.

It was largely about digitisation, which included putting datasets and processes online. What we need now is i-governance or intelligent governance, where the focus should be on leveraging data to serve people better, enable faster service delivery, and make decisions. Inc42: As an individual, do you use AI?

Priyank Kharge: No, I don’t. But, I have experimented with practically every AI chatbot and firmly believe that critical thinking is important. It definitely saves time.

These days, it is quite easy to identify AI-generated material. Whether it is concept papers or other forms of content, you can usually tell whether genuine critical thinking has gone into it, or whether it is simply the result of a well-crafted prompt fed into AI. Inc42: Coming to Bengaluru Tech Summit (BTS), this year’s theme is ‘AI & Beyond’.

What does it reflect? Priyank Kharge: The idea is that AI is inherently disruptive. We have not seen any other technology being adopted at this scale and speed.

While there is a lot of scepticism around AI, especially when it comes to jobs, we need to look beyond just the immediate concerns. AI is not confined to one domain, and it will impact different sectors and verticals. We need to understand how AI will be used across governance, agriculture, biotechnology, manufacturing, defence, and beyond.

That’s the rationale behind this theme. It allows us to gather insights, understand trends across sectors, and get a bet