Government's Plan For AI Compute Capacity Likely To Be Announced In January

The government will likely announce its plans on creating substantial AI compute capacities, that will offer a leg-up for innovators and startups in the country, in January.

"...So you will hear in early January, the Government of India's plan, that we will create substantial AI compute capacity, some in the public sector and some as a partnership with the private sector. So, that is clearly something that we believe is our job to do to create this enabling framework of AI compute capacity," said Rajeev Chandrashekar, Minister of State for Entrepreneurship, Skill Development, Electronics & Technology.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced plans to launch an artificial intelligence mission that will promote AI applications in agriculture, healthcare and education sectors.

While speaking at the Global Partnership for Artificial Intelligence Summit, Chandrashekar also outlined the government's plans to create more diverse data sets and restrict access to Indian data.

"...We are creating what we think would be strategically one of the largest, and most diverse data sets that will be also available to our research and startup ecosystem. And one of the things that we will end up doing through a policy framework and legal framework is restrict access of Indian data to only those models that are trusted," he said.

Unrestricted data can be misused by trained sophisticated models, so it becomes important that trusted data sets are only offered to trusted models, the minister said.

There is a huge talent deficit for AI ecosystem in the coming year, said Chandrashekar. There is a need for academic institutions and industry to collaborate and deliver the talent the AI ecosystem will require, he said.

"...I think there is a serious need for industry and academy to work together in shaping the future pipeline of talent. It is something that governments can help them, but is something certainly that the government cannot take a lead role. It’s really about industry and academy working together."

It's important for conversations around AI to have coordinated progress from previous summits to future summits, according to Chandrashekar. Global coordination with all groups and countries participating and urgent action to further the process are also needed, he said.

The GPAI Summit is a three-day event at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, which will see representation from 28 countries, along with the European Union. India is the current chair of the alliance after Japan.