To keep up the AI innovation game in India, the government recently announced the launch of a one-stop digital platform for all artificial intelligence-related developments in India. Launched by Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Law and Justice and Communications on the occasion of the first anniversary of the second tenure of the government, the portal is called www.ai.gov.in.
Developed by the Ministry of Electronics and IT and IT Industry, National e-Governance Division of Ministry of Electronics and IT and NASSCOM, it aims to boost AI developments in India. It will enable sharing of resources such as articles, startups, investment funds in AI, resources, companies and educational institutions related to AI in India.
The official press statement also stated that it will also share documents, case studies, research reports etc. It also has a section about learning and new job roles related to AI.
“India must be a leading country in the development of Artificial Intelligence in the world, leveraging upon its vast Internet-savvy population and data it is creating. India’s AI approach should be of inclusion and empowerment of human being by supplementing growth and development rather than making human beings less relevant,” said Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad during the launch.
The government strongly believes that the roles of these technologies will especially be more in the pandemic-afflicted world. While AI technology has been deeply integrated into the field of education, agriculture, healthcare, e-commerce, finance, telecommunications, etc., the launch of this portal will lead to the democratization of artificial intelligence in the country.
Responsible AI for Youth Programme
Apart from the portal, the government also launched a National Program for the youth — Responsible AI for Youth, which aims to give the young students of the country a platform to develop appropriate new age tech mind-set. It will help in developing relevant AI skill sets while giving them access to the required AI tool-sets to make them digitally ready for the future.
This program has been created and launched by the National e-Governance Division, Ministry of Electronics & IT in collaboration with Intel India, with support from Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSE&L), Ministry of Human Resource Development.
This program aims at making youth AI-ready while helping reduce the skill gap and helping them create meaningful social impact solutions. As per the official reports, the program will reach out to students from Government schools across India, providing them with an opportunity to become part of the skilled workforce in an inclusive manner.
Who Can Take Benefits Of The Program
The program is open to students of classes 8-12 from Central and State government-run schools (including KVS, NVS, JNV) from across the country.
It will be implemented in a phase-wise manner and in its first phase, each of the State Education Department will nominate 10 teachers as per the eligibility criteria to take up the orientation sessions aimed to help them understand the premise and identify 25-50 potential students for the Program.
The selected students will attend online training sessions on AI and understand how to identify social impact ideas/projects that may be created using AI and submit their ideas through a 60 seconds video explaining a proposed AI-enabled solution.
From the submitted ideas in the form of videos, top 100 ideas will be shortlisted and these students will be invited to attend residential boot camps or online sessions (subject to COVID-19 situation); to take them through a deep dive AI journey.
Post the boot-camps/ online sessions, these students will be asked to create real-time projects and submit their final project in a video format on the website.
Throughout the program, required assistance will be provided by Intel certified AI coaches and mentors throughout to ensure that ideas mature as prototypes. Top 50 project ideas will be shortlisted by experts to be showcased either face to face or in an online format. Further, top 20 innovative projects will be selected by an independent committee of experts and provided opportunities to showcase at a relevant platform.
The government, in its last year’s budget speech, had announced the establishment of various Centre of Excellence (CoE) for AI as it envisions AI to propel innovations and help address social issues in the country.
