The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the comprehensive national-level IndiaAI mission with a budget outlay of ₹10,371.92 crore, to establish a comprehensive ecosystem catalysing artificial intelligence (AI) innovation through strategic programmes and partnerships across the public and private sectors.

By democratising computing access, improving data quality, developing indigenous AI capabilities, attracting top AI talent, enabling industry collaboration, providing startup risk capital, ensuring socially impactful AI projects and bolstering ethical AI, it will drive responsible, inclusive growth of India’s AI ecosystem, Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce and Industry, said.

Briefing the media post the Cabinet meeting, he said, “The IndiaAI pillar will build a high-end scalable AI computing ecosystem to cater to the increasing demands from India’s rapidly expanding AI start-ups and research ecosystem. The ecosystem will comprise of AI computing infrastructure of 10,000 or more Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), built through public-private partnerships.”

Further, an AI marketplace will be designed to offer AI-as-a-service and provide pre-trained models to AI innovators. It will act as an one-stop solution for all the resources critical for AI innovation, he said.

This will also propel innovation and build domestic capacities to ensure the tech sovereignty of India. It will also create highly skilled employment opportunities to harness the demographic dividend of the country.

Transformative tech

“IndiaAI Mission will help India demonstrate to the world how this transformative technology can be used for social good and enhance its global competitiveness,” Goyal added.

According to the government, the IndiaAI Innovation Centre will undertake the development and deployment of indigenous Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) and domain-specific foundational models in critical sectors. The IndiaAI Datasets Platform will streamline access to quality non-personal datasets for AI Innovation.

A unified data platform will be developed to provide a one-stop solution for seamless access to non-personal datasets to Indian startups and researchers, it said adding that the IndiaAI Application Development Initiative will promote the AI applications in critical sectors for the problem statements sourced from Central Ministries, State Departments, and other institutions.

This initiative is also conceptualised to mitigate the barriers to entry into AI programmes and will increase AI courses in undergraduate, masters-level and PhD programmes. Further, data and AI labs will be set-up in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities across the country to impart foundational-level courses.

Recognising the need for adequate guardrails to advance the responsible development, deployment and adoption of AI, the Safe and Trusted AI pillar will also be a big component of this mission. It will enable the implementation of ‘Responsible AI’ projects including the development of indigenous tools and frameworks, self-assessment checklists for innovators, and other guidelines and governance frameworks.

“This programme will catalyse India’s AI ecosystem and position it as a force shaping the future of AI for India and the world. AI is one of the greatest inventions of our time, India will play a major role in shaping its future,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and IT, said.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW