Shaping Responsible Technological Futures from India

Article by Shyam Krishnakumar, Executive Director and Co-Founder and Amisha Mittal, Research Analyst at The Pranava Institute, published in AI Horizon Journal for AI Ethics & Integrity International Association.

The Pranava Institute (TPI) is a New Delhi based research organisation working at the intersection of emerging technology, society, policy, and design to shape sustainable technological futures. Our work focuses on understanding how technological systems interact with institutions, markets, and communities, and on developing practical frameworks that support responsible and inclusive technological futures.

Bridging Research on Technology, Society, Policy and Design

TPI’s work spans two verticals: Digital Economy and Tech Geopolitics, as well as Technology, Society, and Design. Our areas of work include Responsible Deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Public Sector, Governance of Digital Public Infrastructures (DPIs), Critical Minerals Supply Chains, Semiconductors and Electronics Manufacturing, Trust and Safety Online, and Youth and Digitalisation. We believe in building on India’s unique social, cultural and epistemic context to shape emic technological futures.

Informing Technological Policy through Ethics Focused Research

Ethical considerations are often discussed within technology debates, yet translating principles into practice remains a major challenge. Our research focuses on operationalising ethical frameworks so that policymakers, developers, and institutions can apply them in real-world contexts.

● Youth Digital Cultures Lab: We recently launched the Youth Digital Cultures Lab (YDCL), a project supported by the Include+ Network at the University of Leeds. YDCL integrates ethics into technology governance by grounding discussions about digital technologies in lived experiences, cultural diversity, and participatory research. The lab abstains from approaching ethics solely through top-down regulatory frameworks. It focuses on how technologies are experienced by young people in everyday life and how those experiences can inform more responsible policy and design practices. The main questions explored within the lab are centred around themes of meaningful digital inclusion, digital well being, and non-western futures.

● Unboxing Tech Toolkit Series: Our Unboxing Tech Toolkit (UTT) engages ethics in technology by helping young people examine the often invisible infrastructures and value systems embedded within digital technologies. The toolkit has three interactive modules to unpack different ethical questions. The first module – “The Design Did It, Not Me!” helps youth recognise how platform design can influence their attention and behaviour; the second module – “The Materiality of the Smartphone” traces the hidden global supply chains behind everyday devices; and the third module – “Unboxing Internet Infrastructures” explores the environmental costs of the internet. The toolkit turns complex issues like deceptive design, sustainability, and digital responsibility into hands-on learning activities. UTT situates everyday digital practices within broader ethical debates about environmental responsibility, responsible innovation, and participatory technology governance.

● Responsible AI in the Public Sector: Our Responsible AI in the Public Sector project seeks to translate existing ethical guidelines into practical fitness checks that government decision-makers can use before deploying AI systems in public services. By providing accessible tools and policy recommendations, the project aims to support responsible AI adoption while mitigating potential harms.

Building Non Western, Diverse Digital Futures with Young people

AI today raises pressing ethical challenges that extend beyond technical performance and into questions about knowledge, power, and human wellbeing. One significant concern arises from the persistence of historical and epistemic inequalities embedded within digital systems. AI systems risk reproducing these epistemic inequalities because they are often trained on datasets and frameworks shaped by dominant cultural contexts, particularly Western institutions. Such dominant ways of thinking continue to influence how knowledge, education, and governance are structured. Furthermore, many digital systems assume users originate from “WEIRD” (Westernised, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Developed) contexts, which can marginalize users from different linguistic, cultural, or socioeconomic backgrounds. Ethical AI governance must therefore move beyond abstract principles and interrogate how design processes themselves structure power relations and shape the lived experiences of diverse communities. The Youth Digital Cultures Lab (YDCL) at The Pranava Institute seeks to engage with these questions by foregrounding youth perspectives and culturally situated experiences of technology.

In this sense, the ethical challenge is not merely bias in datasets but the deeper reproduction of global knowledge hierarchies, where AI may marginalize indigenous knowledge systems or non-Western epistemologies by encoding a narrow conception of legitimate knowledge.

Building evidence that informs Safe and Ethical AI

As AI tools become more conversational and responsive, they increasingly simulate empathy and companionship. Recent lawsuits involving Character.AI and Google’s Gemini allege severe psychological harm linked to emotionally intense chatbot interactions, including cases involving minors and users in vulnerable mental states. Our research project Feeling Automated examines the societal and legal implications of such systems, particularly the indirect risks associated with emotional manipulation, psychological dependency, and blurred boundaries between human and machine interaction.

Doing our bit to build a more ethical world for tomorrow

Responsible innovation requires integrating ethical reflection at the earliest stages of technological development and engaging meaningfully with stakeholders through participatory approaches and co-creation processes. This means involving communities, youth, policymakers, and affected users in shaping technologies. Technologies should be designed to be adaptable to different users and contexts. Achieving this requires diverse design teams, diverse datasets, co-creation with users, and flexible interfaces. Interdisciplinary collaboration across law, social sciences, design, public policy, and other domains can further help anticipate unintended consequences.