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NITI Aayog and Google comes together to develop artificial intelligence ecosystem

07.05.2018

NITI Aayog and Google sign Statement of Intent in order to foster growth for India's nascent artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) ecosystem and other future technologies. A Statement of Intent (SoI) was signed to this effect by Ms. Anna Roy, Advisor, NITI Aayog and Shri Rajan Anandan, Vice President, India and South East Asia, Google in the presence of the Shri Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog. The NITI Aayog has been entrusted to setup a national programme to conduct research and development in frontier technologies such as AI. In furtherance of this mandate, NITI Aayog has been developing India's national strategy on AI along with the National Data and Analytics Portal to enable the wide deployment and use of AI. Further, the collaboration between NITI Aayog and Google will focus on training, hackathons, mentoring startups, and providing research grants.

NITI Aayog is the premier policy ‘Think Tank’ of the Government of India that provides, both directional and policy inputs. While designing strategic and long term policies and programmes for the Government of India, NITI Aayog also provides relevant technical advice to the Centre and States. Google will train and incubate Indian AI startups in an accelerator program. These startups will be mentored and coached by Google and its affiliates to enable them to better leverage AI in their respective business models. To help bolster the research ecosystem, one of the initiatives includes funding Indian researchers, scholars and university faculty for conducting AI-based research. Further, Google will also bring its online training courses on AI to students, graduates and engineers to numerous cities across India, in the form of study groups and developer-run courses.

Highlighting the significance of the partnership between NITI Aayog and Google, CEO of NITI Aayog said that, "Artificial Intelligence is going to disrupt the way business is done and India, in particular, is uniquely poised in utilising AI to innovate for social and inclusive good. India is embracing future technologies such as machine learning and AI to augment its capacity in healthcare, improve outcomes in education, develop innovative governance systems for our citizens and improve overall economic productivity of the nation. NITI's partnership with Google will unlock massive training initiatives, support startups and encourage AI research through PhD scholarships, all of which contributes to the larger idea of a technologically-empowered New India."

NITI Aayog and Google will organize AI/ML hackathon focusing on solving key challenges within agriculture, education, healthcare, financial inclusion, transportation/mobility. This hackathon may use Kaggle, a global platform, to help facilitate international participation to meet hackathon challenges. Google through the NITI Aayog, will conduct hands-on training programs that aims to sensitise policymakers and technical experts in governments about relevant AI tools, and how they can be used for more effective governance.

Tags : Collaboration Artificial intelligence Growth

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