India AI Mission: Key Highlights, Components, and Significance

Context: 

The Union Cabinet has approved the comprehensive national-level India AI mission with a budget outlay of Rs.10,371.92 crore for the period of 5 years, marking a significant step towards bolstering India’s AI ecosystem.

Key Highlights of the India AI Mission

• India AI Mission Initiative of: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
• Aim: To ensure a structured implementation of the India AI mission through a public-private partnership model aimed at nurturing India’s AI innovation ecosystem.
• Implementing Agency: TheIndia AI Mission will be implemented by ‘IndiaAI’ Independent Business Division (IBD) under Digital India Corporation (DIC). 

Components of the India AI Mission

• IndiaAI Compute Capacity: India AI Mission aims to develop AI compute infrastructure of 10,000 or more Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) through public-private partnerships. 
  • Further, an AI marketplace will be designed to offer AI as a service and pre-trained models to AI innovators.
• IndiaAI Innovation Centre: It will undertake the development and deployment of indigenous Large Multimodal Models and domain-specific foundational models in critical sectors.
• IndiaAI Datasets Platform: It will provide a one-stop solution for seamless access to non-personal datasets to Indian Startups and Researchers.
• IndiaAI Application Development Initiative: It will promote the AI applications in critical sectors for the problem sourced from Central Ministries, State Departments, and other institutions, and then focus on developing/scaling/promoting the adoption of impactful AI solutions for large-scale socio-economic transformation.
• IndiaAI FutureSkills: IndiaAI FutureSkills will mitigate barriers to entry into AI programs and will increase AI courses in undergraduate, masters-level, and Ph.D. programs.
  • Further, Data and AI Labs will be set up in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities across India to impart foundational level courses.
• IndiaAI Startup Financing: It will streamline access to funding for deep-tech AI startups to enable futuristic AI Projects.
• Safe & Trusted AI: It will enable the implementation of Responsible AI projects including the development of indigenous tools and frameworks, self-assessment checklists for innovators, and other guidelines and governance frameworks.

Significance of India AI Mission

• Propelling Innovation: The India AI Mission will propel innovation and build domestic capacities to ensure the tech sovereignty of India. 
• Creation of Employment Opportunities: It will also create highly skilled employment opportunities to harness the demographic dividend of the country. 
• Enhance Global Competitiveness of India: India AI mission will help India demonstrate to the world how AI technology can be used for social good and enhance its global competitiveness. 

India’s Initiatives for Developing AI:

• NITI Aayog Contribution: 

• • NITI Aayog has come up with the ‘National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence’ Discussion Paper that focuses on establishing the International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI) in the country through private sector collaboration.
  • NITI Aayog is to set up India’s first AI-specific cloud computing infrastructure called AIRAWAT. 
• Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI): In 2020, India joined with 15 other countries to form the GPAI to establish frameworks for the responsible utilization of emerging technologies.

News Source: Indian Express