7-Oct-2022: Artificial Intelligence to act as a catalyst in India's development journey and help realise goal of becoming a developed nation by 2047

Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles, Shri Piyush Goyal today said that if India truly aspires to be a developed nation by 2047, as articulated by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech on 15 August 2022, Artificial Intelligence will help the country reach that destination and bring prosperity to every citizen of this country. He was addressing the 3rd edition of Global Artificial Intelligence Summit & Awards.

Quoting Prime Minister Modi, “Any society which does not innovate, stagnates”, Shri Goyal said Artificial intelligence will truly be a catalyst in India's development journey. He said that ‘The Make in India’ program when juxtaposed with AI technology, will enable India to become the factory of the world providing both equipment and technology to the world. He noted that the huge talent pool available in the country will definitely help in exploring newer ways to take AI in every sector of economic activity. The Minister appreciated the Department of Science and Technology for their wonderful work in supporting the efforts of the scientific community of the country over the years, and particularly during the challenging times of Covid. 

Shri Goyal said that the Government is using AI to redefine the way it works. He cited the example of Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP), which is leveraging AI to improve the entire logistics ecosystem of the country. Similarly initiatives like PM GatiShakti National Master Plan, which aims at developing our infrastructure smarter; ONDC, which aims at democratizing E commerce, GeM which has made a significant impact for government procurement - all these are leveraging Artificial Intelligence to bring efficiency and better delivery of services.

Elaborating on the use of AI, Shri Goyal said that ‘Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana’, a major initiative of the Government that was launched during covid pandemic to provide additional food security to over 80 crore people, is also using AI in many ways - to help understand the needs and behaviour patterns of beneficiaries and get feedback about the performance of the Fair Price Shops. It helps in assessing which shops are performing efficiently and providing good services to beneficiaries, he said. One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) uses AI and can help us to analyse the mobility patterns of our migrant workforce, he added.

Shri Goyal remarked that the Artificial intelligence revolution is here to stay and added that with the meaningful contribution by Industry, startups, incubators and  academia, India is going to emerge as the hub of the artificial intelligence revolution across the world. He urged the young minds to inculcate the spirit of inquiry and start thinking of different ways the AI technologies can be harnessed to bring prosperity in our day to day life. He asked them to explore how AI can play a crucial role in empowering the lives of farmers, fishermen and the MSME sector.

The third AI Summit has been organised by AICRA and is focusing on the areas of defence, healthcare, agriculture, smart cities, mobility and education in partnership with the government. The aim is to develop a roadmap on how to use AI ecosystem and startups for the benefit of society. The 3rd Annual conference has set up multidisciplinary groups to break down the silos in which different stakeholders have been working and to find technological solutions for the key sectors of our society.

8-Aug-2022: Artificial Intelligence

The National Education Policy 2020 (Para 4.24) has recommended concerted curricular and pedagogical initiatives, including the introduction of contemporary subjects such as Artificial Intelligence, Design Thinking, Holistic Health, Organic Living, Environmental Education, Global Citizenship Education (GCED), etc. at relevant stages. Accordingly, various steps have been taken up for improving the quality of teacher education such as introduction of the (04) Four Year Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP) and NISHTHA Integrated Training Programme versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 have been introduced for different stages of school education for Teachers, Head Teachers/Principals and other stakeholders in Educational Management. NISHTHA training programme is administered online through DIKSHA portal, which integrates AI solutions to facilitate self-paced learning and close monitoring. Meanwhile, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has introduced Artificial Intelligence as a subject in Class IX from the session 2019-2020 and in Class XI from the session 2020-2021 in their affiliated schools.

10-Jul-2022: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Centre of Excellence (Coe) launched by IAF

The IAF Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence under the aegis of UDAAN (Unit for Digitisation, Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Application Networking) was inaugurated by Air Marshal Sandeep Singh, Vice Chief of the Air Staff (VCAS), on 10 July 2022 at Air Force Station Rajokri, New Delhi.

 A Big Data Analytics and Al Platform has been commissioned in the IAF's Al Centre, for handling all aspects of Analytics, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Neural Networks and Deep Learning algorithms. The high-end compute requirements would be undertaken by the latest Graphical Processing Unit powered servers.

Addressing the gathering, VCAS said that IAF has taken proactive steps to embed Industry 4.0 and Al based technologies in its war fighting processes. He reiterated that the AI COE with high end compute and big data storage capabilities, coupled with full spectrum Al software suites, would substantially enhance operational capability of IAF. The Al based applications are being developed with inhouse expertise in coordination with various PSUs, MSMEs and leading academia in the field of Artificial intelligence.

8-Jul-2022: First ever ‘Artificial Intelligence in Defence’ exhibition & symposium to be held in New Delhi on July 11

Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh will inaugurate the first ever ‘Artificial Intelligence in Defence’ (AIDef) symposium and exhibition, organised by Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence, in New Delhi on July 11, 2022. The event will feature an exhibition to showcase the cutting edge AI-enabled solutions developed by the Services, research organisations, Industry and start-ups & innovators and launch of AI products for the market.

Addressing a press conference on the event, Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar said it is a big event where 75 newly-developed AI products/technologies, having applications in defence, will be launched, as part of the celebrations marking 75 years of Independence ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ and to promote ‘Aatmanirbharta’ initiative in Defence. The products are in the domains of automation/unmanned/robotics systems, cyber security, human behaviour analysis, intelligent monitoring system, logistics and supply chain management, speech/voice analysis and Command, Control, Communication, Computer & Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems and Operational Data Analytics. Besides the 75 products being launched, another 100 are in various stages of development.

In addition, two top defence exporters one each from public & private sector will be felicitated during the event. During the Press conference Additional Secretary Shri Sanjay Jaju, responding to a question said that defence exports have crossed the highest ever figure of Rs 13,000 crore in Financial Year 2021-22, with 70% contribution coming from the private sector and the remaining 30% from the public sector.

The event will also witness panel discussions on ‘Deploying AI in Defence’, ‘GenNext AI solutions’ and ‘AI in Defence – Industry Perspective’, with active participation from the Services, academia, students, research organisations and Industry.

A ‘GenNext AI’ Solutions Competition has been organised to get bright innovative ideas from students on futuristic AI solutions. The top three ideas curated by AI experts will also be felicitated. An exhibition of AI products has also been organised. The event is likely to be attended by dignitaries from friendly foreign countries, senior officials from Ministry of Defence and other Ministries of Government of India, representatives from research institutes, academia and the Industry.

It may be recalled that an AI task force on Defence was established in 2018 to provide a road map on promoting AI in defence. Acting on its recommendations, a Defence AI Council, headed by Raksha Mantri, is spearheading the effort.

7-Jul-2022: AI boosts rural connectivity & healthcare

A total of 15 villages in different parts of the country may soon be seamlessly connected through a next-generation networking solution that can address congestion issues in 4G infrastructure and provide high-tech and affordable internet connectivity.

The network solution called GigaMesh wirelessly provides fibre-like backhaul capacity and paves the road for 5G.

The solution has been developed by Astrome, a deep-tech startup expediting the implementation of 5G and rural telecommunications infrastructure through its patented millimetre wave E-band radios and satellite communication solutions. They have signed a contract with the Department of Telecommunication to start the pilot with 15 villages in India. Plans are afloat to scale the activity to more rural parts of India on the basis of the pilot.

The startup is supported by AI & Robotics Technology Park (ARTPARK), the Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), which aims to chart the future for millimetre wave wireless communication on Earth and in space.

ARTPARK is a not-for-profit foundation promoted by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, with support from the AI Foundry in a public-private collaborative model to promote technology innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) & Robotics with seed funding from the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Govt. of India, under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) and from the Government of Karnataka. It is designed to bring about a collaborative consortium of partners from industry, academia, and government bodies.

GigaMesh, developed by Astrome, supported by ARTPARK, is world’s first multi-beam E-band Radio that is able to communicate from one tower to multiple towers simultaneously while delivering multi GBPS throughput to each of these towers. A single GigaMesh device can provide up to forty links with 2+ Gbps capacity, communicating up to a range of ten kilometres. This flexibility in range makes it suitable for both decongesting the dense urban networks and extending rural coverage. With India’s huge population in the rural segment, Astrome can help improve domestic internet connectivity.

Major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like Ericsson, Siklu, Huawei and NEC have developed E-band products. While all of these products can only do point-to-point communication, requiring a large number of devices which increases the cost of deployment, Gigamesh by ARTPARK’s startup, features multiple point-to-point communication in E-Band, lowering cost and is driven by software to make it easy to deploy, maintain and repair remotely.

Besides this, AI researchers at ARTPARK, in collaboration with HealthTech startup Niramai Health Analytix and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), have also developed XraySetu, a platform that can interpret chest X-rays with 98.86 % sensitivity toward COVID-19 within few seconds.

ARTPARK also organised the ARTPARK Innovation Summit that brought industry, academia and the government under one roof to discuss important topics such as how to create next-generation connectivity in rural areas, health AI for Bharat, connecting Bharat with Drones, inclusive learning for the future and building AI and research ecosystem. Apart from this, they participated in an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) experiment of the Indian Army and showcased India’s only Legged Robotic Dog.

24-May-2022: AI to make roads in India safer to drive

Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered solutions may soon make roads in India a safer place to drive. A unique AI approach that uses the predictive power of AI to identify risks on the road, and a collision alert system to communicate timely alerts to drivers, to make several improvements related to road safety, is being implemented in Nagpur City with an objective of resulting in a significant reduction of accidents.

The project ‘Intelligent Solutions for Road Safety through Technology and Engineering’ (iRASTE) at Nagpur will identify potential accident-causing scenarios while driving a vehicle and alert drivers about the same with the help of the Advance Driver Assistance System (ADAS). The project will also identify ‘greyspots’, i.e., by data analysis and mobility analysis by continuously monitoring dynamic risks on the entire road network. Greyspots are locations on roads, which left unaddressed could become blackspots (locations with fatal accidents). The system also conducts continuous monitoring of roads and designs engineering fixes to correct existing road blackspots for preventive maintenance and improved road infrastructure.

The iRASTE project is under by the I-Hub Foundation, IIIT Hyderabad, a Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) set up in the technology vertical- Data Banks & Data Services supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) under its National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) along with INAI (Applied AI Research Institute). The project consortium includes CSIR-CRRI, and Nagpur Municipal Corporation, with Mahindra and Intel as the industry partners.

The Hub is working to coordinate, integrate, and amplify basic and applied research in broad data-driven technologies as well as its dissemination and translation across the country. One of the primary aims is to prepare a critical resource for the future use by researchers, startups, and industry, mainly in the areas of smart mobility, healthcare along with smart buildings.

What makes the iRASTE project even more unique is that AI and technology is being applied to create practical solutions, as a blueprint,  for  Indian conditions. While the initial rollout of iRASTE is in Nagpur, the eventual goal is to replicate the solution in other cities too. Currently, talks are on with the Telangana government to adopt the technology in a fleet of buses that ply on highways. There are further plans to extend the scope of iRASTE to Goa and Gujarat also.

I-Hub Foundation has also used techniques ranging from machine learning, computer vision and computational sensing for several other data-driven technological solutions in the mobility sector. One such solution is the India Driving Dataset (IDD), a dataset for road scene understanding in unstructured environments captured from Indian roads, which stands out by deviating from the worldwide assumptions of well-delineated infrastructure such as lanes, limited traffic participants, low variation in object or background appearance and strong adherence to traffic rules.

The dataset, a first of its kind, consists of 10,000 images, finely annotated with 34 classes collected from 182 drive sequences on Indian roads obtained from a front-facing camera attached to a car driven around Hyderabad, Bangalore, and their outskirts. The dataset is released in the public domain for unrestricted use under public license and is becoming a defacto dataset for all analysis on Indian road scenes. Currently, there are over 5000 registered users for this dataset across the world.

Another dataset called Open World Object Detection on Road Scenes (ORDER) has also been developed using the India Driving Dataset that could be used by autonomous navigation systems in Indian driving conditions for localization and classification of the objects in a road scene. Besides this, a Mobility Car Data Platform (MCDP) has been designed with several sensors – cameras, LIDARs, with necessary compute for anyone to capture or process data on the car that can help researchers and start-ups in India test their automotive algorithms and approaches in navigation and research on Indian roads.

Lane Road Net (LRNet), a new framework with an integrated mechanism considering lane and road parameters using deep learning, has been designed to address problems of Indian roads, which have several obstacles, occluded lane markings, broken dividers, cracks, potholes, etc. that put the drivers at significant risk while driving. In this framework, a road quality score is calculated with the help of a modular scoring function. The final score helps the authorities to assess road quality and prioritize maintenance schedules of the road so as to improve the drivability.

In order to help local self-government institutions employ suitable rejuvenation methods in tree starved streets, I-Hub Foundation designed a framework for street tree detection, counting and visualization that uses object detectors and a matching counting algorithm. The work has paved way for a quick, accurate, and inexpensive way to recognize tree-starved streets.

8-Apr-2022: Defence Secretary inaugurates Artificial Intelligence & Programming Centre and administrative block in Sainik School, Jhunjhunu

Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar inaugurated Artificial Intelligence & Programming Centre and Manekshaw Block, Administrative Building during his visit to Sainik School, Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan on April 08, 2022. He also unveiled a life size statue of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw at the school. During his visit, the Defence Secretary was also briefed about the school layout and was showcased the drone aerial view of the school by the cadets of class IX and X respectively.

Addressing the students, Dr Ajay Kumar emphasised on never forgetting the three debts in one’s life i.e. towards the school, the family and most importantly towards the nation. He hoped that the cadets and the school will scale new heights of glory and set examples in the highest tradition of Sainik Schools in the years to come.

Established in 2018, this school is the 27th Sainik School in the country, being run under the aegis of Sainik Schools Society, Ministry of Defence.

30-Mar-2022: Artificial Intelligence

Government of India has taken several steps to promote upskilling or reskilling in the field of Artificial Intelligence which include the following: -

1. Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has initiated a programme titled Future Skills PRIME (www.futureskillsprime.in) in collaboration with NASSCOM, a B2C framework for re-skilling/ up-skilling of IT professionals in 10 Emerging are as including Artificial Intelligence. So far, 7 Lakh candidates have signed-up on the Future Skills PRIME Portal, out of which, 1.2 lakh candidates have completed their courses. In addition, 524 Trainers and 4292 Government Officials have been trained on these technologies by NIELIT/C-DAC Resource Centres, and around 1.3 lakh unique learners have collectively earned 8.9 lakh ‘badges’ in recognition of having completed bite- sized digital fluency content. Under Artificial Intelligence, 36,528 candidates are enrolled in deep– skilling courses and 47,744 candidates are enrolled in Foundation courses.
2. Government has published the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence in June 2018 and proposes to develop an ecosystem for the research and adoption of Artificial Intelligence i.e. #AIFOR ALL.
3. Government has launched ‘National AI Portal’ (https://indiaai.gov.in/) which is a repository of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based initiatives in the country at a single place. As on date, there are 1024 national and international articles, 655 news, 200 videos, 90 research reports, 279 Startups, 120 Government initiatives listed at National AI Portal.

In addition, various steps have been taken to promote capacity building in Artificial Intelligence which include the following:

1. Government has initiated ‘Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme’ with an objective to enhance the number of PhDs in Electronics System Design & Manufacturing (ESDM) and IT/IT Enabled Services (IT/ITES) sectors in the country. The research areas under the scheme include Artificial Intelligence (covering 82 PhD fellows) and Machine Learning (covering 59 PhD fellows).
2. National Programme on Responsible Use of AI for Youth: With the objective to empower the youth to become AI ready and help reduce the skill gap, government along with Industry partner has started this initiative to promote AI awareness among Government school going children. In Phase I, 50,666 students and 2536 teachers from 2252 schools from 35 States and UTs attended orientation sessions on AI. In Phase II, 100 teams have been short listed and have undergone extensive mentoring by AI experts. In Phase-III, Top 20 students have demonstrated their solutions in the national conference.
3. To foster innovation through research, government has created several ‘Centres of Excellence’ on various Emerging Technologies including Artificial Intelligence. These centres connect various entities such as startups, enterprises, venture capitalists, government and academia to look into problem statements and develop innovative solutions.
4. Department of Science & Technology is implementing the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) to promote R&D, Human Resource Development (HRD), Technology Development, Entrepreneurship Development, International Collaboration etc. As part of the Mission implementation, 25 Technology Innovation Hubs (this) have been established in reputed institutes across the country in advanced technologies including Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.
5. Government of India has also joined the league of leading economies including USA, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore as a founding member of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), which is an international and multi-stakeholder initiative to guide the responsible development and use of AI, grounded in human rights, inclusion, diversity, innovation, and economic growth.
6. Government of India organized Responsible AI for Social Empowerment (RAISE) in 2020, a first-of-its-kind global meeting of minds on Artificial Intelligence to drive India’s vision and roadmap for social transformation, inclusion and empowerment through responsible AI. It was attended by 79,000+ stakeholders from academia, research, industry and government representatives from 147 participating countries.320 distinguished speakers from 21 countries participated in the event.

The initiatives mentioned above are focusing on digital enablement of citizens in the field of Artificial Intelligence including those belonging to the Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities. Further, the Future Skills PRIME programme follows an ‘aggregator of aggregators’ approach for digital skills training on a national scale and is hosted as an online B2Ce-commerce platform, thereby also enabling citizens in Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities to participate in the programme. To further strengthen the physical and digital connectivity, 40 C-DAC/NIELIT Centres spread across the country are also institutionalizing blended-learning programmes, in a hub and spoke mode, as Lead & Co-Lead Resource Centres.

Further, the Future Skills PRIME programme targets to re-skill/ up-skill aspirants in emerging technologies so that they stay relevant in their present job with improved prospects, besides finding new avenues in future job-roles. The programme also targets those whose may have lost their existing jobs due to disruptive and emerging technologies. Towards this, the programme takes into account employment linkages, such as a ‘Career Prime’ web-page on the platform and an integrated ‘Career Portal’, which provides information on IT-ITeS jobs, internships, apprenticeships, hackathons etc.

Under Future Skills PRIME, incentives are available to the trainees, including those from economically weaker backgrounds, after the learner is successfully assessed and certified. The incentive mechanism is aimed at motivating the learner to successfully complete the online up- skilling/re-skilling programs.

28-Mar-2022: Taskforce for implementation of AI

To study the whole gamut of issues surrounding strategic implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in national security perspective, the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Department of Defence Production (DDP) set up a multi-stakeholder Task Force in March 2018 under the Chairmanship of Sh. N Chandrasekaran, Chairman, Tata Sons. The Task Force submitted its report in June 2018. Following were the major recommendations of the Task Force:

• Integrating and embedding AI strategy for Defence with Defence strategy.
• Establishment of a High level Defence AI Council(DAIC) and a Defence AI Project Agency (DAIPA).
• Development of Data Management Framework, Establishing Data Management Office and appointing Data Management Officer. 
• Scaling the existing capability of Data Centers and establishing a centrally facilitated network of Test Beds.
• Creation of a framework to work with Industry and encouraging start-ups to develop AI capability for Defence and IP management.
• Organising AI training courses in all Defence training centers and institutes for training of Defence Personnel.
• Earmarking of AI budget from yearly Defence Budget with a corpus of Rs 1,000 crores to be provided each year for next 5 years to support AI activities.

Based on the recommendations of the aforesaid Task Force, Ministry of Defence through an Executive Order dated 08.02.2019 created Defence AI Council (DAIC) under the Chairmanship of Raksha Mantri and Defence AI Project Agency (DAIPA) with Secretary (DP) as ex officio head for providing necessary guidance to enable and effect development of operating framework, policy level changes and structural support for AI adoption.

Moreover, the Services have established organizational Institutional mechanism in the form of AI Sub Committee and Joint Working Group on AI in Tri-Services. As part of the Data Management Framework, Services have formulated data policy and appointed Data Management Officers. Each Service has also identified key AI domains for development of AI projects. Besides, the Services are also engaged in development of AI projects from the Start-ups through the Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) and Academia. Towards capacity building, officers at different levels from the Services have been nominated to different courses on AI, both in-house and at reputed academic institutes.

Further, an AI roadmap has also been finalised for each DPSU under which 61 defence specific AI projects have been identified for development. Out of these 61 projects, 26 projects have been completed by the DPSUs.

27-Oct-2021: Artificial Intelligence is a Kinetic enabler for the growth of Indian technology ecosystem

“Artificial Intelligence is a Kinetic enabler for the growth of Indian technology ecosystem” stated Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India at the 5th ASSOCHAM Conference - Artificial Intelligence for Resilient Growth, organized by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM) through Virtual mode.

Speaking at the event, Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar mentioned that Artificial Intelligence can be a big business for some, but for the Government of India, it means use of AI – algorithms, layers on existing stacks to improve Governance delivery, agricultural programmes, defence, security and intelligence related programmes, revenue/tax collection as well as programmes related to Justice and Law. Sharing Government’s approach towards AI, he further added “We will create AI which will have built into it – the qualitative elements of risk management & ethical use. “

Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar also highlighted three major factors that shall create tremendous momentum for the growth of AI in India. First, He mentioned about India soon becoming the largest connected Nation as the rural broadband connectivity programme BharatNet seeks to connect rural households with Internet. At present, there are around 800 million Indians using the Internet. This figure is expected to cross 100 crores over the next 2 years. Second, the Digital India Campaign has already positioned India as a leader in innovation in Public services, Fintech, Health & Education etc and third, the accelerated digitalization of the government and the overall economy shall increase the rate of digital adoption in the country.

Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar also highlighted the proactive approach of the Narendra Modi Government in translating potential into reality. Citing the success of the world’s largest technology driven vaccination campaign, he remarked that  “ For decades multiple narratives have been built around India’s rich demographic dividend to highlight India’s potential. However, over the last 7 years, we saw how combination of decisive leadership and proactive policies can convert potential into reality. “

Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar concluded by saying that “Our ambitions in 2021 are more than what they were in 2014 and significantly much more than any time before that. We have absolute clarity on these ambitions and on the road map ahead. The Math of 1 trillion Dollar digital economy is clear in our mind “.

7-Sep-2021: Scientific experts discuss artificial intelligence (AI) and its implementation at Indo German Workshop

Indian and German Scientific experts discussed five selected thematic areas of mutual interest related to artificial intelligence (AI) and its implementation at a joint virtual workshop. Areas such as AI for sustainability, Healthcare, Autonomous Robotics, trustworthy AI and Mathematical Foundation were deliberated upon at the workshop on AI organized by Indo German Science and Technology Centre (IGSTC) together with the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), India on September 6 and 7.

The workshop was organized as a follow-up of decision to strengthen and enhance the cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence taken during the governmental consultations between two countries in November 2019.

The Indian co-chair of IGSTC and Head- International division of DST, Mr. SK Varshney, and the German co-chair Ms. Katherin stressed on strengthening the academia and industry partnership and enhancing cooperation between the two countries that would help the society, particularly in the field of AI, Machine learning and Robotics.

Ms. Schieferdecker from BMBF stated that Germany is focusing on expanding the German economy with AI. India is a strong partner in AI, and the recommendation of the Scientific Advisory Board from this workshop would take these efforts to further heights.

Dr Murali Mohan, Head-FFT DST, said that globally AI is a very active research topic, and efforts should be made so that India and Germany can cooperate and augment the cooperation. “There are numerous issues to address like upgrading of the technology, skill development and job creation in this field. Academia and industry need to be leveraged in this field, and products need to be geared up,” he said.

The workshop was accompanied by two plenary lectures by Prof. Rupak Majumdar from the German side and Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri from India and followed by Invited lectures and plenary sessions.

2-Aug-2021: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is creating new opportunities which could not be achieved by traditional technology: Experts

Experts highlighted that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is creating new opportunities which could not be achieved by traditional technology and could be used for health care as well as many other present and future challenges in various sectors, at a discourse series recently.

“AI would not replace people but create new opportunities in various fields. It works on data, and if we could train our machines, it could do wonders for us in milliseconds by automating processes. It can be used for diagnostic purposes for various diseases, including COVID-19, and could prove very effective in remote areas where adequate health facilities are not available. Key to success in using AI for various problems is to reach out to maximum people,” said Secretary, Department of Science & Technology (DST) Prof Ashutosh Sharma at the online DST Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav Discourse Series New India @ 75, organised by National Council for Science & Technology Communication and Vigyan Prasar.

He spoke about how DST progressed over the last years, seeding foundational technologies, and have launched several schemes to tackle the challenges that are coming at faster speed with science, technology, and innovation-based solutions. “The emergence of disruptive and impactful technologies poses new challenges and simultaneously greater opportunities. DST is a nursery to help, nurture and grow young talents for the progress and development of the country,” he added.

Anna Roy, Senior Advisor, NITI Aayog, pointed out that AI can be used effectively for various challenges of the country.

“India has a number of challenges, but at the same time, we also have the advantage of being a data-rich country that has a lot of IT professionals, educationalists, and a demographic dividend. All this could prove a boon for us if we could use these for the progress and development of the country”, Anna Roy said.  

She highlighted the role NITI Aayog is playing in identifying various problems of the country and suggesting the future roadmap for India. “NITI Aayog as the leading think tank for the government and country is creating policies for widening science and technology ecosystem and to take industry and academia along for progress and development of the country in every sector,” she emphasised.

3-Jul-2019: Agriculture Ministry signs a Statement of Intent with IBM for pilot study to utilize Artificial Intelligence & Weather Technology solutions in agriculture

Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare signed a Statement of Intent (SoI) for undertaking a pilot study in 3 districts of Bhopal, Rajkot and Nanded in the States of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra respectively, with IBM India Private Limited.  IBM’s Watson Decision Platform will give solution in the field of agriculture through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and weather technology at village level/ farm level to provide weather forecast and soil moisture information on pro bono basis to help farmers for taking decisions regarding water and crop management for better production and productivity.

The SoI was signed in the presence of the Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Shri Narendra Singh Tomar, Minister of State for Agriculture Shri Kailash Choudhary, and other senior officials of the Ministry.

Our nation is foraying further into the digital age in the line of aspiration of Prime Minister of India towards achieving the goal of doubling the farmers’ income and it has been the Ministry’s assurance to bring digital technologies to help our farmers to increase their income and transform Indian agriculture. Enabling use of next-generation technologies such as AI and advanced weather data for better insights to make faster and more informed agricultural decisions is a testament to our commitment.

As part of the collaboration, IBM Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture will be leveraged to obtain farm level weather forecast and village level soil moisture in three districts in Central & Western India. This pilot study will be conducted for the Kharif crop season 2019.

18-Nov-2018: World's first AI news anchor makes "his" China debut

The world's first artificial intelligence (AI) news anchor made "his" debut at the ongoing fifth World Internet Conference in east China's Zhejiang Province.

The news anchor, based on the latest AI technology, has a male image with a voice, facial expressions and actions of a real person. "He" learns from live broadcasting videos by himself and can read texts as naturally as a professional news anchor.

The AI news anchor was jointly developed by Xinhua News Agency, the official state-run media outlet of China, and Chinese search engine company Sogou.com.

According to Xinhua, "he" has become a member of its reporting team and can work 24 hours a day on its official website and various social media platforms, reducing news production costs and improving efficiency.

11-Mar-2017: Chennai team taps AI to decipher Indus Script

The Indus script has long been challenging for epigraphists to decipher.

A Chennai-based team of scientists have built a programme, a “deep-learning” algorithm that can read the Indus script from images of artefacts such as a seal or pottery that contain Indus writing.

Scanning the image, the algorithm smartly “recognises” the region of the image that contains the script, breaks it up into individual graphemes (the term in linguistics for the smallest unit of the script) and finally identifies these using data from a standard corpus. In linguistics the term corpus is used to describe a large collection of texts which, among other things, are used to carry out statistical analyses of languages.

The algorithms come under a class of artificial intelligence called “deep neural networks. These have been a major part of the game-changing technology behind self-driving cars and Go-playing bots that surpass human performance. The deep neural network mimics the working of the mammalian visual cortex, known as convolutional neural network (CNN), which breaks the field into overlapping regions. The features found in each region are hierarchically combined by the network to build a composite understanding of the whole picture.

The process consists of three phases: In the first phase, the input images are broken into sub-images that contain graphemes only, by trimming out the areas that do not have graphemes. The grapheme-containing areas are further trimmed into single-grapheme pieces. Lastly, each of these single graphemes is classified to match one of the 417 symbols discovered so far in the Indus script.

The Indus valley script is much older than the Prakrit and Tamil-Brahmi scripts. However, unlike the latter two, it has not yet been deciphered because a bilingual text has not yet been found.

A bilingual text has in many other cases aided archaeologists in understanding ancient scripts, for example, the Rosetta stone. This stone which was found in the eighteenth century carries inscriptions of a decree, issued in 196 BCE, in three parts, the first two in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic and the Demotic scripts, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. Since the decree was the same, the Rosetta stone provided the key to deciphering Hieroglyphs. For the lack of such a “Rosetta stone,” the Indus script remains undeciphered today.

It is a major effort to even build a standard corpus of the language and decode the writing on existing artefacts and map them to this standard corpus. The most widely accepted corpora of Indus scripts was brought together by the efforts of Iravatham Mahadevan, noted Indian epigraphist, from the 3,700 texts and 417 unique signs collected so far.