IT ministry sets up panels for artificial intelligence roadmap

NEW DELHI: The ministry of electronics and IT has formed four committees to prepare a roadmap for the national artificial intelligence programme. The committees will be headed by IIT directors and experts from industry bodies such as Nasscom, union minister for electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

The four committees will be for citizen centric services; data platforms; skilling, reskilling and R&D; and legal regulatory and cybersecurity. The ministry will promote high level research in these areas, the minister said, adding: “We must learn new dimensions of AI.”

MeitY will also assist the government machinery to implement technologies such as AI and 3D printing, he said. It is also looking at the blockchain technology and working on developing standards and regulations around it.


In January, Prasad presided over a daylong AI workshop, which was attended by representatives from companies such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, Accenture and NVIDIA and academia like Carnegie Mellon University and IITs in Kharagpur, Chennai, Hyderabad and Patna.

Prasad said the ministry will "coordinate" with government think tank Niti Aayog on the programme.

While presenting the union budget 2018, finance minister Arun Jaitley said that technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and others were the technologies of the future and the Niti Aayog would establish a national programme to conduct research and development in these areas.

The finance minister said the government would invest in robotics, big data, quantum communication and other such areas.

He added that the Department of Science would start a mission on cybersecurity and set up a centre of excellence.