HYDERABAD: Telangana is set to introduce an AI curriculum in government schools. Speaking to TNIE at the Global AI Summit here on Thursday, Jayesh Ranjan, special chief secretary of the IT department, said, “We need to identify an agency to help develop the curriculum and decide on what will be taught in Class 6 and further. All these are the intentions so far outlined in our roadmap. Moving forward, some parts of the curriculum will be developed in-house, aiming to develop it into a detailed implementation plan.”
During the summit, the government announced that it has entered into 26 MoUs with tech giants such as NVIDIA, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon Web Services, as well as academic institutions, startups and not-for-profit organisations.
Microsoft has agreed to train 50,000 secondary school students, 10,000 vocational students, 20,000 industry workers and 50,000 government officials in AI, digital productivity, and cybersecurity through the “Advantage Telangana” initiative.
Additionally, the government has entered into a strategic three-year partnership with NVIDIA Corporation. This collaboration will provide AI training to 5,000 students from 200 technical and higher education institutions through NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Institute (DLI) programme. NVIDIA has also agreed to work with the government to establish an AI Centre of Excellence focused on driving innovation and research
Inaugurating the summit at HICC here on Thursday, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy said that no Indian city was as perfectly ready for AI as Hyderabad. Unveiling the logo of AI City, a 200-acre hub near Hyderabad dedicated to R&D, Revanth said: “This summit is our declaration that we are ready for AI. We invite everyone to join us in making the Future City a prominent AI hub in the world.”
IT Minister D Sridhar Babu said that Telangana is not just participating in the AI revolution but leading it. At the heart of Telangana’s strategy is the establishment of the AI City, he pointed out and noted that the government’s vision was to elevate Telangana into a trillion-dollar economy.
“This AI City will be the cradle of innovative advancements, affirming our status as a technological powerhouse. We also plan to launch an AI school within the city,” he said.
WTC to provide 2L sqft space for AI-driven firms
Addressing the summit, Jayesh Ranjan said that Telangana’s partnership with the World Trade Centre (WTC), Shamshabad, will provide two lakh sqft of world-class office space for AI-driven companies, facilitating their operations while the AI City is being developed.
The government has also signed deals with Amazon Web Services and NxtWave that will benefit over 1 lakh students and professionals in the state. These collaborations underscore the state’s commitment to advancing AI capabilities and fostering technological innovation in Telangana, a release from the IT department said.
Regarding the development of open AI datasets in Telugu, Jayesh Ranjan told TNIE, “Work is underway. One of today’s MoUs was with Swecha NGO, which is creating an archive of Telugu literature including articles, poems, to help AI systems understand Telugu’s syntax, grammar and vocabulary.”
Additionally, the government announced that Uber will create 1,000 jobs in tier-two and three cities of Telangana. “Uber has a vast amount of traffic data and generates more with each ride booked on its platform. They want to implement AI applications but realise they need additional support. As a result, they plan to create jobs for youths from rural areas in data centres for task like data annotation. This setup, however, does not have to be exclusive to Uber. They are open to other companies using the infrastructure, provided Uber’s data privacy is maintained,” he told this newspaper.
