India has the highest penetration of artificial intelligence skills among the workforce. AI is the fastest growing skills set and increasing exponentially, said Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, while addressing an event at the company's R&D centre in Bengaluru. He also said that today the GDP component impacted by digital technologies in India is 8 percent which will increase to 60 percent by 2021. This confidence is powered by India's adoption of AI solutions to create breakthrough innovations and accelerate the digital transformation of the country. According to Microsoft, over 700 business and government organizations have adopted its Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions. Over 60 percent of these AI customers come from large businesses in manufacturing, financial services.

President and co-founder of US-based technology firm NVIDIA Corporation Jensen Huang Monday said artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to democratise innovation by commoditising software. He was speaking at the fourth edition of the NITI Lecture Series, which among others was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "At the 4th #NITILecture, Mr Huang of @nvidia explained how AI's power like in automating the process of automation itself. How it can write code for complex use-cases by learning from examples. "The panel discussion during the 4th #NITILecture emphasised how since #AI is heavily context dependent, it is important to evolve India-specific nuanced & inclusive solutions.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend Monday the fourth edition of the NITI Lecture Series focussed on'leveraging artificial intelligence for inclusive growth', according to an official statement. Modi will attend the lecture series in which the key note address will be delivered by Jensen Huang, president and co-Founder of US-based technology firm NVIDIA Corporation, the Niti Aayog said Sunday. The government think tank said the 2018 theme for the lecture series'AI for All: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Inclusive Growth' is part of the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence aimed at evolving a robust ecosystem in India for AI research and adoption. Union ministers, policy makers, experts from different walks of life along with Niti Aayog vice chairman, CEO, members and other senior officials will also be present on the occasion. The Union Budget 2018 had mandated the Niti Aayog to come up with a national programme on employing artificial intelligence towards national development and since the Aayog has published a National Strategy for artificial intelligence (AI).

NITI Aayog has identified five sectors that includes healthcare, agriculture, education, infrastructure and transportation that can benefit from adoption of artificial intelligence. In its discussion paper on national strategy for artificial intelligence (AI) released on Monday, the Aayog has proposed a two-tier structure to address research in India. According to the Aayog, application of AI to healthcare could increase access and affordability of quality healthcare while it can enhance farmers income, increase productivity and reduce wastage when used in agriculture. "In areas of education AI can improve access and quality of education while improving connectivity and safer modes of transportation when put to infrastructure and transportation sectors," the Aayog said. Aiming to put AI to use for all and across sectors, the Aayog has identified barriers that needs to be addressed to achieve success in the use of AI.

In this year's Financial Budget, Finance Minister had mandated NITI Aayog, a policy think tank of the Government of India, to establish the National Program on AI to guide R&D in frontier technologies. In a result of this mandate, NITI Aayog today presented its discussion paper on National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (NSAI). In its discussion paper on national strategy for artificial intelligence released today, NITI aayog has identified sectors -- healthcare, agriculture, education, infrastructure and transportation as key five sectors that can benefit from AI adoption. The NSAI paper gives many disruptive suggestion including one to utilize market place models for data, annotation, and deployable solutions in AI. We need to democratise access to and development of this technology.

NEW DELHI: In a concerted effort towards making India a leading nation in the field of artificial intelligence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked Niti Aayog to familiarise all ministries with the high-end technology and explain how it can be leveraged to address the country's socio-economic problems. Central ministries will be required to set up dedicated artificial intelligence cells and eventually they will all be integrated to help scale up the performance of all social indicators. Following this directive from the PM, the government's think-tank is likely to periodically review the progress made on AI across ministries. The Aayog has already initiated pilot projects on adoption of AI across health, education and agriculture. By May end, it will formulate a national strategy/policy on AI, outlining the scope of research, adoption and commercialisation of the technology.

NEW DELHI: The ministry of electronics and IT has formed four committees to prepare a roadmap for artificial intelligence for the country, said Ravi Shankar Prasad, union minister of electronics and IT on Friday. The committees will be headed by IIT director and industry experts from bodies such as Nasscom he added. The four committees will be for Citizen Centric Services; Data platforms; Skilling, reskilling and R&D; Legal regulatory and cybersecurity. Prasad said that the ministry will conduct high level research in these areas. "We must learn new dimensions of AI," he said.

NEW DELHI: To counter China's commitment towards artificial intelligence, the government has formed a high-level committee headed by NITI Aayog vice chairman Rajiv Kumar to lay out a roadmap for India's research and development on AI and its applications. The panel, which will be a mix of government, academia and industry officials, will be notified soon. The government wants to ensure India does not fall behind in emerging technologies and hence the urgency to roll out a nationwide AI programme that will include robotics and data analytics. China has prepared a threestep roadmap to become the world leader in AI by 2030. A preliminary meeting on AI was held in January and was attended by NITI Aayog member VK Saraswat, the secretaries of biotechnology and science and technology, former Nasscom head Kiran Karnik, former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai, IIT faculty members including Pankaj Jalote and Pulok Ghosh, besides top officials from Flipkart, NetApp and TIE Ventures.

The government will soon offer incentives to startups and venture funds that undertake application-oriented research on artificial intelligence across key sectors including banking, insurance, education, health, retail, and transportation. Financial allocation under the Atal Innovation Mission will be used to fund the programme on a nationwide scale and projects will be granted on the challenge mode, a senior government official told ET. The government is already providing support of up to Rs 10 crore to already established and upcoming new incubation centres depending on the set criteria laid under the Atal Innovation Mission, for which an allocation of Rs 500 crore was made in 2015-16. The original allocation under AIM for 2017-18 stood at Rs 112 crore, which has been revised to Rs 150 crore while Rs 200 crore has been allocated for 2018-19. "It has just been announced. Niti (Aayog) has been working on the subject for a while and will be coming out with a roadmap shortly," the official said requesting anonymity.

New Delhi:The government will soon offer incentives to startups and venture funds that undertake application-oriented research on artificial intelligence across key sectors including banking, insurance, education, health, retail and transportation. Financial allocation under the Atal Innovation Mission will be used to fund the programme on a nationwide scale and projects will be granted on the challenge mode, a senior government official told ET. The government is already providing support of up to Rs 10 crore to already established and upcoming new incubation centres depending on the set criteria laid under the Atal Innovation Mission, for which an allocation of 500 crore was made in 2015-16. The original allocation under AIM for 2017-18 stood at Rs 112 crore, which has been revised to Rs 150 crore while Rs 200 crore has been allocated for 2018-19. "It has just been announced. Niti (Aayog) has been working on the subject for a while and will be coming out with a roadmap shortly," the official said requesting anonymity.