Govt to launch India AI mission 2.0 in next 6 months, says IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

• India AI Summit to be world's largest, attended by global tech leaders
• India AI mission 2.0 to launch in 5-6 months, aiming for talent development
• $70 billion investment in AI infrastructure planned, may double after summit

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Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw claimed that the India AI Summit will be the biggest AI summit in the world, attended by head of states and industry bigwigs, including Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Google's Sundar Pichai, among others.

The IT minister also said that the government is looking to launch India AI mission 2.0 in the next 5 or 6 months. The minister pointed out that the IT industry has already seen a 33 percent increase in AI related hirings. In addition, he said that the government is discussing the right model to develop talent.

"The industry has done their own experiments on this. We will now take this to the next level and industry will be a partner in this. We will go to 500 universities and provide AI infra and course curriculum for getting good AI training and opportunities," he said.

The minister also said the government will take up research programs. Vaishnaw also revealed that an investment of $70 billion in the infrastructure layers is already in the pipeline and it should not be surprising if the amount doubles by the end of the summit.

Moreover, Vaishnaw said IT majors had informed PM Modi earlier that they have 200 models across sectors. A few weeks ago PM also met AI model developers. The models are in very good shape. And they will be launched at the summit."

S Krishnan, secretary of the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY), meanwhile, said that over 10 tangible outcomes are expected from the India AI Summit.

"We want to, through the summit, enable the democratisation of technology, especially AI," he said, adding, "We also want to enable development of AI solutions in critical sectors in India, apart from developing global standards and models of AI governance."