As part of his current visit to Dubai, Canada and the United States, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis is hosting a series of meetings in Quebec with the intent on promoting artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
CM Fadnavis met Vice Premier of Quebec Dominique Anglade, and they agreed to a collaboration between Maharashtra and Quebec to increase increments in AI and aerospace.
Maharashtra and Quebec will have increased engagements in Artificial Intelligence, Aerospace and in other areas.
We’re thankful Madam Dominique Anglade @DomAnglade for the assistance in promoting AI accelerators with IVADO and @_NextAI !— Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) June 11, 2018
Two of the key meetings that CM Fadnavis attended were with IVADO and AI Next.
The former signed a collaboration agreement with the Department of IT, Maharashtra, for setting up an AI accelerator in the state. They also signed a Letter of Intent to become part of the World Organization on AI (Artificial Intelligence – Quebec expertise). Additionally, AI Next has signed an agreement with the Government of Maharashtra’s Department of information Technology to set up a joint AI accelerator to promote 50 start-up AI units in Maharashtra. It has also been agreed that IVADO and Applied AI Research Institute focused on social good in Mumbai, which was launched in February, will work together to set up AI clusters in Maharashtra in conjunction with IIT Mumbai.
Speaking at a panel discussion on the topic, CM Fadnavis said, “There is a great deal of uncertainty around AI. However, as representatives of the people, if we begin to embrace it, it will give a great deal of confidence to the citizens and enable us to demystify the technology. With effective use of AI, we hope to bring basic services to the doorsteps of the people, be able to save lives through improved health care as also create about 230 million jobs in the country by 2025 under WEF Industry 4.0.”
India and Maharashtra is progressing and expanding with more opportunities.
It’s time to again think to invest with same energy in Maharashtra!
I sincerely appeal you all to Come, Visit, Invest, Explore in Maharashtra: CM @Dev_Fadnavis appealing Indian investors from Canada! pic.twitter.com/D4yhnLnVrI— CMO Maharashtra (@CMOMaharashtra) June 11, 2018
Under the CM Fadnavis’ leadership, Maharashtra has invested in several areas of AI already. Maharashtra was the first state in India to come out with a comprehensive cloud policy that has enabled the entire government to take steps to shift its operations the cloud and take advantage of the capabilities of cloud computing. Providing a boost to this direction, the government has come out with the first Fintech policy in India that includes incentives to startups, Mumbai fintech sandbox, finTech registry etc. Additionally, the IT department of the state government has also embarked on use of blockchain in some key areas such as land registry, healthcare, transport etc.
Fadnavis announced that AI was to be deployed to bring about improvement in fields of governance and welfare such as:
- Agriculture: to provide farmers with information on
(a) what to sow to maximise their profit (not just yield)
(b) when to sow it
(c) when to fertilise, irrigate and harvest it - Health: Assist hospitals in the diagnosis of common cancers (e.g. mouth or throat cancers) from images and blood samples using Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of a large population; assist ASHA workers to provide pre-diagnosis in remote villages for simple diseases, and generate recommendations for escalations to doctors for more complex diseases
- Home: Detection of number plates from moving cars through CCTV images; detection of criminals using face detection algorithms
- Revenue and Finance: Detection of fraud and evasion of taxes by using analytics techniques coupled with AI
- Power: Forecasting power prices based on weather patterns and weather forecasts
- IT: Detection of cyber attacks using Advanced Persistent Threat monitoring systems
- Social Justice — Special Abilities: Speech synthesis for the speech impaired, and speech recognition and transcription for the hearing impaired
- Industries or Textiles: Assisting in scoring or making recommendations on applications to various government benefits schemes such as loans and grants for upgrading technology, among others.
