Govt holds talks with industry, academicians on IndiaAI platform rollout

The Centre on Monday held the first round of consultations on the IndiaAI programme with industry, policy advocates, and academicians to design a national AI data platform and open up datasets held by the government for startups, researchers and innovators.

“We need to design a national AI data platform, making data held by government organisations and the private sector available for research and innovation. The India dataset has a particular relevance not seen elsewhere. There’s a perception that if we can do this right it will be a gold standard of datasets,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the minister of state for Electronics and Information Technology.

He added that the programme will ensure Indian datasets help Indian startups and researchers to build new applications. Not only will access to the platform be limited, but the government will also decide who accesses the datasets. The minister invited industry stakeholders and experts to volunteer on designing key aspects of the programme. The government plans to launch the programme by the end of April after around 40 days of consultations.

When industry stakeholders pointed out the need to focus on more fundamental and applied research on AI, the minister said: “We will create an innovation and research network with an architecture that can collaborate between universities, researchers, and industry stakeholders.”

The programme also includes the design of the India Data Management Office (IDMO), which will aim to improve access, quality, and use of public sector data to catalyse data-driven governance, decision-making and create an ecosystem for data-based Innovation and research.

Other top issues discussed here included the current situation of Indian datasets, research projects on AI, compute infrastructure needed for it and ways to create new use cases with the technology. Representatives from industry bodies such as Nasscom, policy advocacy groups, multiple think tanks and IT companies Infosys, and Tech Mahindra took part in the consultations.

The meeting also discussed the possible incentives that can be given to the private sector to encourage them to open the non-personal datasets held by them.

The experts also asked the government to create an index for responsible AI for standardizing ethical practices and reducing concerns such as human bias.

The programme will also establish three Centres for Excellence (CoE) for AI, as announced by the Union Budget 2023. The centres will be set up in top educational institutions, allowing leading industry players to partner in conducting interdisciplinary research and develop cutting-edge applications and scalable problem solutions in areas of agriculture, health, and sustainable cities.

The minister suggested that the centre of excellence should not be conventional in design and has a healthy amount of private sector participation, and involvement from startups and should focus on application use cases.