The Centre on Tuesday asserted that there is an anticipation build-up globally around India’s semiconductor plans and its capacity to become the next hub — an endeavour that would require the talent and specialised skills of over 10-lakh strong workforce.

“The whole world is looking at India — it is possibly the only country in which the next big semiconductor hub can be established in the coming 4-5 years. That is what the world’s impression is. Everybody is highly appreciative of our very comprehensive approach. We are not rushing through, we are not saying that we have made one fab unit and done it all... we are focusing on creating an ecosystem,” Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Telecommunications and IT, told reporters at the sidelines of the launch of Sanchar Saathi portal.

The portal aims to facilitate and help people block, track and check the genuineness of a used device before buying them.

Building ecosystem

The Minister said the government was earmarking 20,000 GW of green energy for manufacturing semiconductors and developing the whole ecosystem in India.

Vaishnaw, who visited the Silicon Valley in the US last week, said: “Everybody appreciated that in the last one year — since this programme (Semicon India) was initiated — there are 106 universities running semiconductor programmes.” After meeting the brass of tech giants like HP, Intel, Western Digital, Micron, Applied Materials and AMD, among others last week, he said the semiconductor industry will double from the current $650 billion to $1 trillion plus by 2030.

In his presence, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was also signed between the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) and Purdue University, US, for cooperation in capacity building, R&D and industry participation.

Regulating AI

On policy/regulations on artificial intelligence (AI), Vaishnaw said: “The world is looking at what the framework/ regulatory set up should be. Recently in the G7 meet also, all the digital ministers of G7 countries... they are seriously concerned about what the regulatory framework would be. So, this is a global thing, this is not one country’s... this has to be looked at purely from the international perspective.”

The Minister had recently told Parliament that the Centre is not considering bringing a law or regulating the growth of AI in the country. He, however, acknowledged that there are ethical concerns and risks around AI and the government has already started making efforts to standardise responsible AI and even promote the adoption of the best practices.

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