India's AI programme to be kinetic enabler to achieve USD 1 trillion digital economy: IT Minister

New Delhi: The government on Friday unveiled a report on the country's artificial intelligence programme, which it believes will be a kinetic enabler for India to achieve the goal of USD 1 trillion digital economy by 2026.

Minister of Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the draft National Strategy on Robotics will be part of the multi-year India AI programme.

"This is a deep, multi-year roadmap to make Indian AI work for being a kinetic enabler of the trillion dollar digital economy," Chandrasekhar said. The minister had earlier said the government plans to make India a USD 1-trillion digital economy by 2026.

He said that apart from supporting the startup ecosystem, India's AI programme will focus on comprehensive skills in the country, building computer infrastructure etc.

The report recommends creation of India data sets platform to be used by domestic startups and researchers, building GPU (graphical processing unit)-based computer infrastructure to provide resources for development of AI engines or models to indigenous firms.

"India AI computer platform will be a PPP (public private partnership) project that will create substantial GPU capacity for our startups and researchers to train their models," Chandrasekhar said.

He said India data sets will be a collection of data and may be one of the largest collections of anonymised data sets, which will be used by Indian researchers and Indian startups to train their model.

"Indian AI will also support development of AI chips in partnership with the Semicon India Program," Chandrasekhar said.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT has floated a consultation paper on the National Strategy on Robotics, which is open for public comments till October 31.