The Union Cabinet has approved the India AI Mission that aims to create an ecosystem for facilitating Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovation through strategic programmes and partnerships in the country. As per the mission details elaborated by the Minister of Commerce and industry, Piyush Goyal the India Artificial Intelligent Mission is funded with Rs 10372 crores, and it collaborate both the public and private sectors for achieving the set goals. The decision to create the AI Mission was taken by the Union Cabinet on March 8, 2024.
The AI Mission is working through several modes to prepare the country to face the challenges and opportunities of the AI wave. Following are the main action areas:
- Democratizing computing access
- Improving data quality
- Developing indigenous AI capabilities
- Attracting top AI talent
- Enabling industry collaborations
- Providing startup risk capital
- Ensuring socially impactful AI
- Bolstering ethical AI.
Through action plans focusing on these areas, the AI Mission will drive responsible and inclusive growth of India’s AI ecosystem.
According to the Minister, Piyush Goyal’s statement, the intention of the government is to support the development of a competitive startup system in the AI space- “The India AI pillar will build a high-end scalable AI computing ecosystem to cater to the increasing demands from India’s rapidly expanding AI startups and research ecosystem. The ecosystem will comprise of AI computing infrastructure of 100000 or more Graphics Processing Units (GPUs).”
AI marketplace of innovators
There are several other components that support the India AI Mission, and the most important one is an AI Marketplace that is designed to offer AI as a service and provide pre trained models to AI innovators. This marketplace will function as one stop solution for all the resources that are vital for the AI sector. Here, it is implicit that the government is offering a google Play store like platform for AI services.
India AI Innovation Centre
The government as part of the AI Mission, is planning to create the India AI Innovation Centre to undertake the technology-based solutions for critical sectors. here, the AI Innovation Centre may develop and deploy indigenous Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) and domain specific foundational models for the various sectors.
Another functionality of the AI Innovation Centre is to proliferate the use and development of AI technology to various areas including educational institutions and across different cities.
Through the AI Innovation Centre, AI knowledge will be increased in the undergraduate, masters, and PhD programmes.
Data and AI labs will be set up in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities across the country to spread the AI knowledge base across different foundational courses.
Safe and trustful AI
Another important component of the AI Mission is the promotion of AI technology in a responsible, trusted and safe manner through the policy of Safe and Trusted AI pillar. Here, as part of the Mission, Responsible AI projects will be implemented. Strategy here is the development of indigenous tools and frameworks, design of self-assessment checklists for innovators, guidelines and governance frameworks etc. for making AI trustful.
The broad objective of the India AI Mission is to promote an AI ecosystem for India, that will shape the AI future for India and the world.
