NEW DELHI, Mar 7: Aiming to set up a holistic ecosystem for the development of artificial intelligence in India, the Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the setting up of an AI Mission with an outlay of over ₹ 10,000 crore.
The focus of the mission will be to develop an end-to-end structure starting with the education of youngsters in the emerging field to setting up innovation centres and creating compute capacity.
The Union Cabinet also approved a hike in Dearness Allowance for central government employees and Dearness Relief to pensioners by four per cent from January 1, 2024. The decision comes ahead of Lok Sabha elections which are likely to be announced by the middle of this month.
Announcing the Cabinet decisions, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said the AI mission was in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of democratising technology and making it available to every citizen and that a capital outlay of ₹ 10,372 crore had been approved for it.
Listing out seven pillars of the mission, an official release said public and private sectors would collaborate to create a compute capacity of more than 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) to cater to the needs of startups and promote research in the area.
AI innovation centres will also be set up to develop Large Multimodal Models which can work with multiple data types and help in key sectors like agriculture and health. On education and talent, the release said India ranks first in terms of AI skill penetration and access would be facilitated to courses in the sector at the undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD levels. In tier 2 and 3 cities, 200 AI and data labs would be set up to impart foundational-level courses.
Some of the other pillars are facilitating access to datasets and ensuring the responsible development of AI. Welcoming the move, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said the mission would catalyse India’s AI ecosystem. In a post on X, the minister also said the programme would position India as a “force shaping the future of AI for India and for the world.”
About the hike in DA, Mr Goyal said 49.18 lakh employees and 67.95 lakh pensioners would benefit from the government decision which would cost ₹ 12,868.72 crore per annum to the exchequer. The additional instalment of Dearness Allowance (DA) and Dearness Relief (DR) to pensioners represents an increase of 4 per cent over the existing rate of 46 per cent of the basic pay/pension to compensate against price rise.
(Manas Dasgupta)
