AI suitability depends on quality of knowledge it is trained on: Harivansh

LUCKNOW: Deputy Chairman, Rajya Sabha, Harivansh on Tuesday called for stronger synergy between Parliament and State Legislatures to ensure efficient, accurate and context-specific adoption of artificial intelligence in legislative functioning.

Addressing the plenary session of the 86th All India Presiding Officers Conference (AIPOC), Harivansh said legislatures must utilise their vast institutional knowledge to train AI systems suited to the Indian parliamentary ecosystem.

He said legislatures are custodians of official policy documents, including debates on legislation and budgets, which form the core knowledge base of democratic institutions. These documents, once laid on the table of the House, often remain scattered across ministries, limiting accessibility.

Harivansh said Parliament and State Legislatures can leverage AI to create a unified platform that enables easy access to such information, positioning legislatures as knowledge hubs. He stressed the need for creating a national ‘Data Lake’ comprising legislative debates, vocabulary and documents from across the country to train AI systems aligned with India’s linguistic and institutional diversity.

He emphasised that AI adoption in parliamentary systems must follow a hybrid approach, with human oversight retained over training processes and outputs. Harivansh said AI’s suitability for parliamentary use lies not merely in algorithms but in the quality and contextual depth of the knowledge on which it is trained.

He said parliamentary knowledge is unique and deeply embedded within institutions, built over decades through debates, rulings, conventions and constitutional practices, and must therefore be curated and trained within Parliament itself.

Highlighting ongoing initiatives, Harivansh said Parliament has been testing AI-enabled transcription and simultaneous interpretation services to facilitate multilingual access. Members of Parliament can currently access House business and administrative documents in languages of their choice through AI-based systems.

He added that AI can also be deployed for routine administrative functions such as scrutiny of Question Hour admissibility, searching past precedents and rulings, and improving procedural efficiency. He called for increased awareness and orientation programmes for legislators and staff to enable effective use of digital tools.

The conference also discussed issues related to strengthening accountability and capacity building of legislators. The 86th AIPOC began on January 19 and was attended by Governor Anandiben Patel and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.