Budget 2019: Government to start national programme on AI

The government will start a national programme on Artificial Intelligence to harness the benefit from new age technologies in identified areas, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said on February 1.

"India has become the second largest hub of start-ups. In order to take benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related technologies to the people, a national programme on artificial intelligence has been envisaged by our government. This should be catalysed by the establishment of the National Centre of AI as a hub along with centres of excellence. Nine priority areas have been identified," Goyal said.

He said that a national AI portal will be developed soon.

AI technology helps in analysing data in various technologies to improve the efficiency of the system like power management in cars, mobile devices, weather predictions, video and image analysis etc.

The minister said that India is now leading the world in mobile data consumption which has increased 50 times monthly under the present regime with data and voice calls being offered at very low rates.

Goyal said that more than 3 lakh common service centres are operating across the country delivering government services that are available digitally to people in rural areas and helping government create digital villages.

"In the next five years, we will be creating 1 lakh digital villages," Goyal said.

The finance minister also unveiled the government's vision for 2030 in which digital technologies will play a pivotal role.

Goyal said that the digital infrastructure in the digital economy of 2030 will be built upon successes achieved in recent years in digitisation of government processes and private transactions.

"Our youth will lead us in this endeavour with innumerable startups, creating digital India and millions of jobs in the ecosystem," Goyal said.

He said that with renewables becoming a major source of energy supply, India will lead the world in the transport revolution through electric vehicle and energy storage devices.