On Monday, March 11, the Central government announced a plan to establish 10 artificial intelligence (AI) labs in 10 Thiruvananthapuram colleges. According to IANS, it further stated that it would allocate Rs 2,000 crore to support start-ups, particularly those developed by youth in Kerala and also throughout the nation.
How will the plan be implemented?
Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology (IT), Rajeev Chandrasekhar, stated that these labs would involve a combination of government and private institutions and are integral to the IndiaAI Mission.
Under the programme, the minister declared that these 10 colleges with AI Labs will be provided with the best infrastructure comprising hardware, software, and skilling programmes. These AI labs will be set up in collaboration with leading global tech companies as partners in Thiruvananthapuram, he told IANS.
Amount of Rs 10,371 crore approved
The minister elaborated further on how the mission, which was approved and announced by the Union Cabinet last week with a financial outlay of Rs 10,371 crore, will benefit young Indians and start-ups in Kerala.
The union minister further added, "Innovation centres under the IndiaAI Mission will harness the power of AI for our Indian digital economy and our citizens. They will develop in areas such as health, medicine discovery, agriculture, education, security, governance, language translation, among others."
Hence, for the successful implementation of the programme, a capacity of 10,000 Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) for AI computing will further help start-ups in Kerala and across the country that currently lack adequate AI computing resources, and for this, an amount of Rs 2000 crore have been set aside, he informed IANS.
