Indian and German Scientific experts discussed five selected thematic areas, including AI for sustainability, Healthcare, Autonomous Robotics, trustworthy AI and Mathematical Foundation — of mutual interest related to artificial intelligence (AI) and its implementation at a joint virtual workshop.
The workshop on AI was organised on 6 and 7 September by Indo German Science and Technology Centre (IGSTC) together with the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), India. The workshop was organised as a follow-up to strengthen and enhance cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence during the governmental consultations between the two countries in November 2019.
The Indian co-chair of IGSTC and Head – International division of DST, Mr SK Varshney, and the German co-chair Ms Katherin stressed on strengthening the academia and industry partnership and enhancing cooperation between the two countries that would help the society, particularly in the field of AI, Machine learning and Robotics.
Ms Schieferdecker from BMBF stated that Germany is focusing on expanding the German economy with AI. India is a strong partner in AI, and the recommendation of the Scientific Advisory Board from this workshop would take these efforts to further heights.
Dr Murali Mohan, Head-FFT DST, said that globally AI is a very active research topic, and efforts should be made so that India and Germany can cooperate and augment the cooperation. “There are numerous issues to address like upgrading of technology, skill development and job creation in this field. Academia and industry need to be leveraged in this field, and products need to be geared up,” he said.
Two plenary lectures accompanied the workshop by Prof. Rupak Majumdar from Germany and Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri from India.
Last year, Germany released a plan for AI with India as a partner. FAIR Forward – Artificial Intelligence for All, a German Development Cooperation initiative, works with five partner nations – Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, and India – to promote an open, inclusive, and sustainable approach to AI globally. One focus area of the programme is to create open voice datasets in Indian languages.
