The Union cabinet, on Thursday, approved India AI mission with an outlay of Rs 10,372 crore for five years. The funds will be used to create a large computing infrastructure.
The IndiaAI mission will establish a comprehensive ecosystem, catalysing AI innovation through strategic programmes and partnerships across the public and private sectors, the government said in a release.
This will be done by democratising computing access, improving data quality, developing indigenous AI capabilities, attracting top AI talent, enabling industry collaboration, and providing startup risk capital.
Union Minister Piyush Goyal said after the cabinet meeting that super-computing capacity, comprising over 10,000 GPU, will be made available to various stakeholders for creating an AI ecosystem.
Startups, academia, researchers and industry will be given access to the AI supercomputing infrastructure established under the India AI Mission, the minister said.
A national data management officer will be set up under the mission that will coordinate with various government departments and ministries to improve the quality of data and make them available for AI development and deployment.
The mission will be implemented by ‘IndiaAI’ Independent Business Division (IBD) under Digital India Corporation (DIC) and has the following components:
IndiaAI Compute Capacity: The IndiaAI compute pillar will build a high-end scalable AI computing ecosystem to cater to the increasing demands from India’s rapidly expanding AI start-ups and research ecosystem. The ecosystem will comprise AI compute infrastructure of 10,000 or more Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), built through public-private partnerships. Further, an AI marketplace will be designed to offer AI as a service and pre-trained models to AI innovators. It will act as a one-stop solution for resources critical for AI innovation.
IndiaAI Innovation Centre: The IndiaAI Innovation Centre will undertake the development and deployment of indigenous Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) and domain-specific foundational models in critical sectors.
IndiaAI Datasets Platform: The IndiaAI Datasets Platform will streamline access to quality non-personal datasets for AI Innovation. A unified data platform will be developed to provide a one-stop solution for seamless access to non-personal datasets to Indian startups and researchers.
IndiaAI Application Development Initiative: The IndiaAI Application Development Initiative will promote AI applications in critical sectors for the problem statements sourced from central ministries, state departments, and other institutions. The initiative will focus on developing/scaling/promoting the adoption of impactful AI solutions with potential for catalyzing large-scale socio-economic transformation.
IndiaAI FutureSkills: IndiaAI FutureSkills is conceptualised to mitigate barriers to entry into AI programs and will increase AI courses in undergraduate, masters-level, and PhD programmes. Further, data and AI labs will be set-up in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities across India to impart foundational level courses.
IndiaAI Startup Financing: The IndiaAI startup financing would support and accelerate deep-tech AI startups and provide them streamlined access to funding to enable futuristic AI Projects.
Safe & Trusted AI: Recognising the need for adequate guardrails to advance the responsible development, deployment, and adoption of AI, the Safe & Trusted AI pillar will enable the implementation of responsible AI projects including the development of indigenous tools and frameworks, self-assessment checklists for innovators, and other guidelines and governance frameworks.
