Govt launched India’s National Artificial Intelligence Portal

Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister of IT, electronics; communications, and law and justice launched a dedicated portal for Artificial Intelligence (AI) on May 30, 2020. The day marked the first anniversary of the second tenure of the central government.

The portal aims to aid the development of solutions based on Artificial Intelligence (AI). It will act as a one-stop digital platform for AI-related developments in India, investment funds in AI, sharing resource details of startups, companies, and educational institutions related to AI in India.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT and IT Industry body NASSCOM has jointly developed India’s national Artificial Intelligence Portal called www.ai.gov.in.

Ravi Shankar Prasad on Artificial Intelligence (AI):

The Union minister during the launch of the portal mentioned that India must be a leading country in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the world, leveraging upon the data is it creating and vast internet-savvy population. India’s approach towards AI should be of empowerment of human beings and inclusion by supplementing growth and development rather than making human beings less relevant.

‘Responsible AI for Youth’ Programme launched by the government:

The central government has also launched a national programme for youth named ‘Responsible AI for Youth’. It aims at empowering the young students of the country with an appropriate new-age tech mindset, access to required AI toolset and relevant AI skill sets to make the youth digitally ready for the future.

National-e Governance Division, Ministry of Electronics and IT in collaboration with Intel India created and launched the programme, with support from the Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSE&L), Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Objective of ‘Responsible AI for Youth’ Programme:

The program will empower the youth to become AI-ready and will help in reducing the skill gap while enabling the youth to create meaningful social impact solutions.

The Programme has been designed to reach out to students from government schools pan India and also to provide them with an opportunity to become part of the skilled workforce in an inclusive manner.

Who can be a part of the program?

The program has been open to the students of classes 8-12 from central and state-run government schools. In its first phase, each of the State-education departments will be nominating 10 teachers who identify 25-50 potential students for the program.

The selected students will attend the online training sessions on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and will also understand how to identify social impact ideas/projects that can be created using AI. The students will be able to submit their ideas through a 60-second video explaining a proposed AI-enabled solution.

Opportunity to the selected students:

From the ideas submitted by the students in the form of videos, the top 100 videos will be shortlisted and they will be invited to attend residential boot camps or online sessions which will take them through a deep dive AI journey. After the boot camps/online sessions, the students will be asked to create real-time projects. They will need to submit their final project in a video format on a website.

Intel certified AI coaches and mentors will provide adequate handling throughout. It will ensure that ideas mature as prototypes. The experts will also shortlist the top 50 project ideas and selected students will also be invited to show their projects either face to face or in an online format.

Further, the top 20 innovative projects will be selected by an independent committee of experts that will provide opportunities to showcase at relevant platforms.