On the occasion of the first anniversary of the second tenure of the government, the Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Law and Justice and Communications Ravi Shankar Prasad launched India’s national Artificial Intelligence Portal called www.ai.gov.in

This 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 section about learning and new job roles related to AI.

On this occasion, the Minister for Electronics & Information Technology, Communications and Law & Justice, Ravi Shankar Prasad, also launched a National Program for the youth, “Responsible AI for Youth”. The aim of this Program is to give the young students of our country a platform and empower them with appropriate new age tech mind-set, relevant AI skill-sets and access to required AI tool-sets to make them digitally ready for the future. The 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. DoSE&L will help reach-out to State Education Departments to nominate teachers as per eligibility criteria.

“Responsible AI for Youth” will empower the youth to become AI ready and help reduce the skill gap, while enabling youth to create meaningful social impact solutions. The Program is designed to reach out to students from Government schools pan India and provide them with an opportunity to become part of the skilled workforce in an inclusive manner.

Addressing the media at the launch event, the Minister for Electronics & IT, Law & Justice, Shri Ravi Shankar 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”.

MoS for E&IT, Communications, and HRD, Shri Sanjay Dhotre, while emphasising the role of digital technologies with special reference to pandemic-afflicted world, said that such technologies have proved to be our saviours during the difficult times. These have been of very crucial help especially in the field of education, agriculture, healthcare, e-commerce, finance, telecommunications, etc. He further added that the digital technologies have been great equalisers despite several odds. Highlighting the importance of the AI Portal, Shri Dhotre said that such national portal will lead to democratization of artificial intelligence in the country.

Details of Responsible AI for Youth Programme:

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 - all 28States and 8Union Territories and aims to bring about a change in the thought process and create a bridge for the digital divide. The Program 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 Program. 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.

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.

Adequate handholding will be provided by Intel certified AI coaches and mentors throughout to ensure that ideas mature as prototypes. The experts will shortlist top 50 project ideas and students will be invited to showcase their projects 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 relevant platform.

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RJ/RP