Why in the news ?

• The industry sought clearly defined policy priorities and access to ‘clean data’ for application of AI.

More on news

• Stating that Artificial Intelligence (AI) had the potential to help solve complex developmental challenges in India, including improving food and water security, the industry sought clearly defined policy.

• The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology interacted with more than 30 representatives from the industry and academia, including AI experts from the IITs at Kharagpur, Madras, Hyderabad and Patna and representatives from Microsoft, Google, IBM, Accenture, NVIDIA and Nasscom.
• As work had already been done in the field by U.S. and China, ministry said that India’s model of uptake and scale­ up of AI would be one that was indigenous to India and built on the principle of augmenting intelligence and not displacement of jobs, the Centre said.
• The industry and academia opined that the government should define policy priorities in the application of AI. This would facilitate them in pursuing a strategy that would benefit the country most.
• The industry stressed that data had to be made available for innovation and India being a country with large number of languages and dialects, there was a need to translate data in a usable format.
• The Centre is to help facilitate interactions between the industry, government and academia and would come up with a robust legal framework for developing the ecosystem for AI.

What is AI ?

• According to the father of Artificial Intelligence, John McCarthy, it is “The science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs”.
• Artificial Intelligence is a way of making a computer, a computer-controlled robot, or a software think intelligently, in the similar manner the intelligent humans think.
• AI is accomplished by studying how human brain thinks, and how humans learn, decide, and work while trying to solve a problem, and then using the outcomes of this study as a basis of developing intelligent software and systems.

Source

·         The Hindu.