MoS Chandrasekhar Outlines Plan for India’s AI Programme, Highlights Robotics, Chips, and Datasets
Electronics and IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Friday unveiled a comprehensive roadmap for India’s artificial intelligence program, which will serve as the primary or foundational blueprint for a broader national robotics strategy. He discussed two major developments which are the culmination of a deep and multi-year AI strategy and the launch of a National Robotics Policy to make India a major player in the global AI and robotics landscape.
The minister acknowledged the significant work of the six artificial intelligence working groups. These groups are tasked with achieving the six core objectives of India’s AI agenda and have produced a comprehensive report that will serve as the core of India’s AI strategy. Chandrasekhar said this roadmap is not about chasing trends like generative artificial intelligence, but is a strategic initiative to pave the way for India’s future in the tech world.
Key highlights of India’s AI and robotics strategy include:
Billion dollar digital economy: The primary objective of India’s AI strategy is to be a kinetic enabler of a billion dollar digital economy. This ambitious goal aims to harness the potential of artificial intelligence to promote economic growth and innovation.
Real life use cases: The Minister stated that AI can transform many sectors and stimulate India’s startup and entrepreneurship ecosystem. So there will now be more focus on core sectors such as fintech, governance and education, along with the four key sectors mentioned in the draft national robotics strategy – agriculture, healthcare, national security and manufacturing.
Components: The strategy includes important components such as India Datasets Platform, collaboration with academic institutions of excellence, skill development initiatives, engineering support, support for AI startups, financial incentives similar to those successfully implemented in the semiconductor industry through the PLI scheme. , a public-private partnership (PPP) model for AI computing infrastructure, and a significant opportunity involving AI chips. This opportunity includes a partnership between India AI and Semicon India to provide funding for the development of next-generation AI chips and computing hardware.
Robotics Strategy: The Ministry has released a National Robotics Strategy and it is open for public consultation, seeking input from various stakeholders, including startups, researchers, businesses and manufacturing companies. Chandrasekhar said the robotics policy addresses issues related to Industry 4.0 and robotics, aligning it with the broader AI strategy.
On the implementation, Chandrasekhar explained to ReturnByte, “Especially for that, there will be a center of excellence with a partnership ecosystem of startups, corporates, academia and the government around the COE. They will use a dataset platform with the necessary datasets that will train their model and they will develop what they want datasets. And the government in some cases supports startups in the form of funding. The government also provides infrastructure support for AI computing infrastructure to train this model.”
It must be understood that an integral part of India’s AI program is the integration and availability of various data sets in one place to meet the multi-parameter requirements of AI models and serve as basic models for training. These datasets are made available in an integrated manner through the India Datasets Platform, which is managed by an independent office of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). These data sets contain government and private sector data, all of which are anonymized and free of personal information.
“The core result that it brings together in a very comprehensive way to build India’s AI remains the same. There is no doubt that India wants to be a major player in the future of AI. Indian startups, academia and companies must and will be major contributors to AI and AI in shaping the future”, the minister stated.
