Centre Launches India's First Artificial Intelligence Portal, To Serve As One-Stop Platform For AI Developments For Students

The Centre, on the first anniversary of the Modi 2.0 government, launched India's national Artificial Intelligence Portal called INDIAAI, on Saturday.

The portal was launched by Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Law and Justice and Communications Ravi Shankar Prasad,

The portal is meant to be a one-stop digital platform for AI-related developments in India, where resources such as articles, startups, investment funds in AI, information about companies and educational institutions related to AI in India will be available.

This will act as a knowledge hub for students, who can easily access all the documents, case studies, research reports etc. from the portal. The portal also has a section about learning and new job roles related to AI.

On the occasion, the minister also announced the National Program for the youth, "Responsible AI for Youth".

The minister said that technologies have proved to be saviours during difficult times, especially referring to the pandemic-afflicted world. He added that this will empower students with appropriate new age tech mindset, relevant AI skill-sets and access to required AI tool-sets to make them digitally ready for the future.

The program is open to students of classes 8-12 from Central and State government-run schools (including KVS, NVS, JNV) from across the country.

It has been created and launched by the National e-Governance Division, Ministry of Electronics & IT in collaboration with Intel India, with support from Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSE&L), Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Speaking to the media, Navruti Rai, Country Head of Intel India said that AI is absolutely critical and that India should become synonymous with it. "It is important because the world will see at least $16 trillion more in the next 10 years or so. And I want to see how India can get most of this into our economy," LiveMint quoted Rai as saying.

Rai also informed that India has 250 million students in schools today (between kindergarten and class 12), and only about 40 per cent of these students are in private and urban schools, which makes it more like a need of the hour.

Responsible AI Youth Program will be released in a phased manner, starting from the State Education Department nominating 10 teachers as per the eligibility criteria. Teachers can also self nominate themselves after fulfilling the eligibility criteria.

The selected teachers and students will undergo orientation and online training sessions, which will be followed by submission of ideas by students through 60-second videos online, out of which top 100 ideas will be shortlisted.

The selected will further be attending boot camps and online sessions to learn descriptively about the AI journey, provided by Intel certified AI coaches and mentors.

The teachers and experts will shortlist top 50 project ideas and students will be invited to showcase their projects either face to face or in an online format.

Further, an independent committee of experts will select the top 20 innovative projects and provide opportunities to showcase at relevant platforms.

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