Ravi Shankar Prasad launches India's national Artificial Intelligence Portal
May 30, 2020
New Delhi [India], May 30 : On the occasion of the first anniversary of the second tenure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government, Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Law and Justice and Communications Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday launched India's national Artificial Intelligence Portal called www.ai.gov.in.
"Artificial Intelligence Portal has been jointly developed by the Ministry of Electronics and IT and IT Industry. National e-Governance Division of Ministry of Electronics and IT and NASSCOM from the IT industry will jointly run this portal. This portal shall work as a one-stop digital platform for AI-related developments in India, sharing of resources such as articles, startups, investment funds in AI, resources, companies and educational institutions related to AI in India. The portal will also share documents, case studies, research reports etc. It has a section about learning and new job roles related to AI," read an official statement issued by the Ministry of Electronics and IT.
On this occasion, Ravi Shankar Prasad also launched a National Program for the youth -- Responsible AI for Youth. The Ministry said, "The aim of this programme is to give the young students of our country a platform and empower them with appropriate new age tech mindset, relevant AI skill-sets and access to required AI tool-sets to make them digitally ready for the future. The programme has been created and launched by the National e-Governance Division, Ministry of Electronics and IT in collaboration with Intel India, with support from Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSE&L), Ministry of Human Resource Development. DoSE&L will help reach-out to State Education Departments to nominate teachers as per eligibility criteria."
Addressing the media at the launch event, Prasad said "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."
"The national programme is open to students of classes 8 - 12 from Central and State government-run schools (including KVS, NVS, JNV) from across the country and aims to bring about a change in the thought process and create a bridge for the digital divide. The programme 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. Teachers may also self nominate themselves by fulfilling the eligibility criteria. These teachers will be provided orientation sessions aimed to help them understand the premise and identify 25-50 potential students for the programme. The identified 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," the statement read.
