Cabinet approves Rs 10,372-crore India AI mission to set up compute facility

The Central government had approached the Union Cabinet for approval on the AI plan around the end of January

The Union Cabinet on March 7 approved a Rs 10,371.92-crore artificial intelligence (AI) programme, aimed at creating computing infrastructure in public-private partnership mode.

Under the India AI program which the Cabinet approved, the government will aid in building high-ending scalable AI computing ecosystem, undertake development and deployment of indigenous large multimodal models; promote AI applications in critical sectors and so on.

Additionally, under the India AI program, support will also be given to accelerate deeptech AI startups. Work will also be taken up to implement responsible AI projects including development of indigenous tools and frameworks, and so on, according to a government statement.

Apart from that, under the India AI program, the government will also work on mitigating barriers to entry in AI programs and increase AI courses in undergraduate, masters-level and PhD programs.

After the announcement of the approval of the IndiaAI mission, minister for electronics and information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said, "With AI mission, he will make compute power available to innovators, startups, students, and educational institutions.

Minister of state Rajeev Chandrasekhar said, "AI is one of the greatest inventions of our time, this program will position us as a force shaping the future of AI for India and for the world. "

In January this year, Chandrasekhar had said that the government intends to approach the Cabinet for approval of setting up the Rs 10,000 crore- worth supercomputing and quantum hubs.

He had then said, "The quantum of funds is more than Rs 10,000 crore. It will be presented before the cabinet for approval soon. It will include setting up of graphic processing units (GPUs) in PPP mode with data centres in the private space and public data centres under C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing)."

Chandrasekhar also said that C-DAC's PARAM supercomputers will also be used under this plan to boost the artificial intelligence computing capacity.

This comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in December 2023, announced that the government will an AI mission to bring compute power in the hands of startups and innovators, so that they can tackle problems in areas like healthcare, agriculture and education.

"We will launch an AI mission to get AI compute power which will help startups and innovators. With this mission, agriculture, healthcare and education sectors will be promoted," Modi had said at the Global Partnership for AI Summit in Delhi on December 12.

Earlier in 2023, the government adopted a report by an expert panel, comprising of representatives from government and industry, which recommended that the Indian government create computing infrastructure of 24,500 graphics processing units (GPU) at 17 centres to enable innovation in the emerging tech area in the country by startups and academia.