New Delhi, Mar 7 (Agency) Eying a big share in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), the government on Thursday approved a comprehensive national-level India AI mission with an outlay of over 10,300 crore to set up an ecosystem catalyzing AI innovations through strategic programs and partnerships across the public and private sectors. This was approved in a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narandra Modi. In furtherance of the vision of Making AI in India and Making AI Work for India, the Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister has approved the comprehensive national-level IndiaAI mission with a budget outlay of Rs. 10,371.92 crore, an official statement said. The IndiaAI mission will establish a comprehensive ecosystem catalyzing AI innovation through strategic programs and partnerships across the public and private sectors.
By democratizing computing access, improving data quality, developing indigenous AI capabilities, attracting top AI talent, enabling industry collaboration, providing startup risk capital, ensuring socially impactful AI projects, and bolstering ethical AI, it will drive responsible, inclusive growth of India’s AI ecosystem. The mission will be implemented by ‘IndiaAI’ Independent Business Division (IBD) under Digital India Corporation (DIC) and has the following components:. One, 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 an AI compute infrastructure of 10,000 or more Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), built through a public-private partnership. 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. Two, 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. Three, 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 for Indian startups and researchers.