HYDERABAD: THE State government has come up with a draft framework for its ‘Year of AI’ initiative for 2020 and has invited suggestions from various stakeholders in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) before finalising its plans, which include promoting the use of AI in sectors such as agriculture, healthcare and education.
As of now, the State government in its draft framework has identified six core pillars upon which the ‘Year of AI’ initiative will be based. First, the State government is planning to provide open data and a data exchange platform, as well as high-performance computing labs for those in the AI sector. It is also looking towards fostering talent, education, promoting research and innovation, and enabling adoption and community collaboration in the sector. Governance, ethics and privacy is also one of the pillars.
Speaking to Express, Rama Devi, director, Emerging Technologies and Officer on Special Duty (OSD), ITE&C department, said, “We are going to partner with many organisations and plan different initiatives. Many Centres of Excellences will be set up. These will be announced on January 2.” One of the Centre of Excellence in the AI ecosystem will be established with NASSCOM, she added.
While five of the six pillars are self-explanatory, the aspect of ‘governance, ethics and privacy’ needs to be explained since the government plans to use this technology in healthcare and agriculture.Devi said, “The government is responsible for creating rich data sets in mobility, healthcare, agriculture, education and so on. These data sets will be made available to research organisations and companies to come out with innovative solutions.”
In the draft framework, the State government is planning incentives to those contributing to data sets and to startups in the AI sector. “We had a roundtable conference with many from the startup sector, academia and the industry. We will take their inputs (on the framework) and then rework on it before finalising it,” she added.
In October this year, IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao declared that 2020 would be declared as the ‘Year of AI’.