THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Though CPM state secretary M V Govindan has been articulate about artificial intelligence (AI), it seems that the Left government has not given much importance to the new technology. As per the budget announcements made by the finance minister, the state has allocated a total of Rs 517.64 crore to strengthen the IT sector focusing on AI. “A Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) will be set up in Thiruvananthapuram to elevate the state as a major player in AI. A national- level hackathon will be organised to encourage the development of Agentic AI system and Rs 1 crore is set aside for this,” the budget stated.
However, according to technocrats this is not enough at a time when neighbouring states have taken concrete steps to invite investments and startups to their respective territories. Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Karnataka are miles ahead of Kerala and several states are developing AI policies.
According to IT experts, the state has to first formulate an AI policy focusing on promoting artificial intelligence parks, and startups.
Telangana government has declared an AI city project on a 200-acre campus after constituting an AI advisory council. It also envisages state of the art data centres and computing facilities.
The Karnataka government had formed an AI administration unit. With its existing IT talent pool, Karnataka had integrated AI into government-level operations.
The Karnataka cabinet had also approved an initiative to set up a Centre of Excellence in AI. Whereas the Tamil Nadu government has taken steps to develop the state into an AI hub in the next five years. It has also established an AI Mission and started research.
“Compared to these states and considering future chances, Kerala has not given much importance to AI in the budget,” executive committee member of GTech, the Association of IT Companies and Business Process Management in the state, Ranjith Balan told TNIE. “We have not formed an AI policy till now.
We have also set aside just Rs 1 crore to organise a hackathon to encourage the development of Agnetic AI system. And another `10 crore has been set aside for a GPU cluster. This is too insufficient. This happens when other states have already started AI hubs to encourage startups,” he said.
IT professionals working in AI pointed out that considering the fact that China could develop ‘DeepSeek,’ a free AI-powered chatbot on a low budget, the state’s inactiveness would affect the prospects of future IT developments. According to Ranjith Balan, who is also president of the Professional Congress, the budget has allocated only Rs 21 crore each to Technopark and Infopark.
“There are about 300 companies in these parks that are on the waiting list for additional space. Each company needs 150 seats each. The government could easily build an additional building in these two parks. Otherwise, the companies would be compelled to switch over to other states,” Ranjith said.