With 25 years of experience as an Indian Civil Servant, Vidushi Chaturvedi has worked in diverse sectors including social, finance and technology. These include women and child development; health and family welfare; education; non-tax revenue assessment/collection; as well as communications, electronics and IT.
How do emerging technology innovations help solve problems faced by humanity – for instance issues concerning access to equitable opportunities and resources for development,social and economic inclusion,ease of living and a dignified existence, furtheringgender justice and climate resilience, ensuring sustainable development, espousing societal values and trust? The rapidly evolving transformative technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Quantum computing, 3D Printing… need to be leveraged for reaching Viksit Bharat goals – these are some of her current engagements in NITI Aayog’s Frontier Tech Hub.
Vidushi holds a PhD in International politics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. While serving in the Unique Identification Authority of India, Aadhaar, she decided to upskill herself in the area of technology regulation and law. Her recently completed LLM in technology, innovation and entrepreneurship with a focus on cybersecurity, privacy rights and artificial intelligence from Seattle University, Washington, equips her to help shape the evolving AI landscape in India.
Before joining the civil services, Dr. Vidushi has worked as a freelance journalist for the print / electronic media. She has also taught under-graduate / graduate students (English Literature) in a college in Lucknow University.
Vidushi is a zealous advocate for women’s empowerment. As the Chairperson of the Internal Complaints Committee set up under the Prevention of Sexual Harassment Act 2013,she has attempted to serve gender justice. She was also supervising the implementation of the PNDT (prohibition of sex selection) Act, 1994 and defended the legislation in FOGSI v Govt. of India (2019), where the Act was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Dr. Vidushi recently offered a self-curated seminar course in Law, Policy and Evolving AI to Vth year students in National Law University, Delhi. The recently published – ‘Handbook on Global Philosophies on AI Ethics’, by Routledge carries her chapter, “Feminist Ethics and Artificial Intelligence”. The Edward Elgar Encyclopedia on AI has two entries by Dr. Chaturvedi (by invitation). The titles of the entry are – Gender and AI and India: Regulatory Regime for AI.
Her areas of interests and strengths include policy formulation, governance, auditing of performance and systems, financial management and budgeting, drafting of subordinate legislations, overseeing implementation of laws, teaching, social research and advocacy of gender / privacy rights and effective regulation of Artificial Intelligence.
