MeitY to support development of AI chips under national programme

The ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) may create a special scheme to support semiconductor chips focused on artificial intelligence (AI) along with platforms for datasets and computing. This is part of its multi-year roadmap for a technology programme.

The working groups of academics and industry stakeholders, appointed by the Centre for the India AI programme, have submitted their recommendations. They suggested development of a substantial graphic processing unit (GPU) capacity for startups.

MeitY may carve out a new development incentive support for AI chips from India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology.

Another recommendation is to build an India datasets platform — likely to be one of the largest and most-diverse collections of anonymised data required for training AI models.

The ministry was to publish the recommendations from the working groups on its website on Friday. However, the report was not released till the time of going to press.

“This is a deep multi-year roadmap, firstly for making India AI work for being a connecting enabler of a $1 trillion digital economy growth. Secondly, to deploy AI in real-life use cases that span from agriculture, healthcare, education, fintech, security, and governance,” Chandrashekhar said.

The ministry on Friday also invited industry suggestions on its draft National Strategy on Robotics released last month.

The robotic strategy identifies four sectors to prioritise robotics automation in India, namely, manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, and national security.

MeitY has proposed a two-tier institutional framework to facilitate implementation of the National Strategy on Robotics, which will be undertaken as the ‘National Robotics Mission’, says the draft.

As part of the robotic strategy, the ministry aims to create a Robotics Innovation Unit (RIU) – for standards, sandboxing of robotic solutions. 

It is seeking inputs from the industry on its contours. It will be an independent agency institutionalised under the MeitY as a part of India AI, to lead the implementation of the National Strategy on Robotics.

The unit may engage with the industry, MSMEs, start-ups, individual innovators, R&D institutes, academia, and government organisations to create a robotics ecosystem. 

The government has invited suggestions on the strategy with a deadline of October 31.

The three Centres of Excellence (CoEs) on AI that were announced during the Union Budget for 2023-24 are being built by the Ministry of Education with support from MeitY, the minister said. “There will be 10-20 CoEs (for AI) in the country in the coming years. Some of them will be funded by MeitY, some of it would be private, academic and enterprise partnerships. But we will create a very flourishing and rapidly-improving ecosystem of CoEs,” he added.