IIT Madras faculty launch ‘AI4Bharat’ – platform for research, innovation in artificial intelligence

Kumar said, “Most of the research in AI today is driven by the problems of the West. For instance, building autonomous cars takes priority over building systems that can monitor the condition of rural roads. We need to change this by shifting the focus to India. This is where domain experts and the government would play an important role – identify problems that are unique to India and can benefit from AI.”

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Khapra added, “To solve such problems it is important to move AI research and development out of silos and create a platform where AI professionals can come together to design and build impactful solutions. With this in mind, our immediate goal is to create a community of 100 selected AI experts and 50 domain experts.”

The platform is also open to enthusiastic students who will be mentored to solve these problems.

Kumar said, “We realize that there is an acute shortage of AI talent in India and look at education as an important function of this platform. Our startup ‘One Fourth Labs’ will work closely with AI4Bharat and offer basic and advanced courses in AI at affordable prices – as low as Rs. 1,000 for a five-month online course. These courses are designed with the goal of imparting requisite skills for solving real-world problems. Our next batch starts on August 15, 2019 and registrations are now open.”