The government is working 24/7 to propel India’s digital economy to trillion dollars in size by 2026, Rajeev Chandrasekhar said.
Technological talent, and not chip-led compute power, is a fundamental challenge that needs to be solved to propel India’s progress in artificial intelligence (AI), Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on December 16.
“15 years ago you measured academic institutions by how many students got hired by Google or went abroad. Now it is about what kind of platforms the students of a particular institution are building for the world,” the Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology said at the CNBC-TV18 and Moneycontrol Global AI Conclave on December 16.
“Talent is a much more fundamental challenge in AI. We need universities to churn out masters and PhDs in AI. Talent is something that keeps me awake at night. The infrastructure pieces will get solved very quickly,” he added.
The minister said that, despite the current global race for AI compute power driven by a shortage of advanced chips, this issue will soon be resolved.
Addressing a packed hall of tech enthusiasts in Bengaluru, he outlined the government’s 24/7 efforts to build the infrastructure needed for emerging technologies like AI to propel India’s tech economy to a trillion dollars by 2026.
Chandrasekhar also talked about AI regulations at the Global AI Conclave, emphasising the need of a rules-based global framework to address the threats posed by deep fakes and other forms of harm to users in AI.
Earlier this week, the New Delhi Declaration of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), unanimously adopted by 28 countries, laid special emphasis on the risks of AI, particularly in relation to misinformation, disinformation, personal data, and threats to human rights and democracy.
This came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while urging countries to work together on a global framework for AI, pointed out that the technology has the power to make or break democracies.
Palo Alto Networks presents the CNBC-TV18 Moneycontrol Global AI Conclave, in collaboration with EY as the Knowledge Partner and Google, Yotta Infrastructure, and Reliance Industries Limited as Associate Partners, with Townhall serving as the Technology Partner.
