IIIT-Hyderabad announces academic course in AI to re-skill techies

Institute expects to train at least 1,000 professionals in 2-3 offerings in the first year

International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT)-Hyderabad's Machine Learning Laboratory has announced a 4-month programme called 'Foundations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)' for technology professionals, who are increasingly feeling  the need to re-skill themselves to beat the uncertainty of their careers in the IT industry.

"We expect to train at least 1,000 professionals in 2-3 offerings in the first year. We will work on how to scale up the intake going forward as we anticipate a large demand for this programme," IIT-Hyderabad director P J Narayanan said on Tuesday.

IT companies in India have already launched in-house programmes to re-skill their work force as they get down to reshaping their operations in line with the changing global trends, while several Indian Institutes of Technology ( IITs) have academic and research programmes in these new technologies.

However, the four-month foundation programme designed by IIIT-Hyderabad is a first-ever independent academic initiative aimed at re-skilling the working professionals in AI, ML and Deep Learning (DL), which are increasingly becoming central to the products, services and businesses around the globe.

IIIT-Hyderabad found itself in great demand ever since the Indian corporates felt the need to understand the significance of these new technologies and their relevance to Indian context in the past couple of years. Besides conducting week-long camps for senior leadership of corporates, the institute has also been providing guidance to the researchers across India.

The first not-for-profit self funded IIIT set up in PPP mode 20 years ago, this deemed university had built research teams and projects around artificial intelligence and robotics much before their relevance to the industry was hardly understood by any one. It has a team of 25 faculty members specialised in AI-ML, by far the largest team in the country, according to Narayanan.