The government of India and the U.S government have collaborated to launch the U.S India Artificial Intelligence (USIAI) platform.
Indo-U.S Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) was established in the year 2000 under an agreement between the Governments of India and the United States. It operates through two bilateral agreements: Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum (2000)and United States-India Science and Technology Endowment Fund (2009).
Through this platform, scientists across the world who are working in the field of Artificial Intelligence focused on the possibilities, challenges and the scope of AI technologies that could bring breakthrough solutions in the area of agriculture, energy, climate change, affordable housing and smart cities during a panel discussion on the occasion of the launch of the USIAI.
The scientists also underlined the fact that the launch of the USIAI will be capable of bringing together experts from around the world for more discussions.
“USIAI will serve as a platform to discuss opportunities, challenges, and barriers for bilateral AI R&D collaboration, enabling AI innovation, share ideas for developing an AI workforce and recommend modes and mechanisms for catalysing partnerships. This is a great chance for two countries to synergize research and explore various possibilities,” said Professor Sandeep Verma, Secretary, Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), during the online panel discussion.
“It may not help solve all the problems but can certainly help us find problem areas and control problems,” said Padmanabhan Anandan, CEO, Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Further, R. Ramanan, Director of the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), Niti Ayog Government of India, added that the demographic dividend is one of the biggest advantages for India. “Around 150 million students are going to enter the workforce in 5-10 years. Our goal is to drive and create a culture of innovation among this workforce, and this collaboration can help drive the culture of innovation to find a solution for problems of both countries,” he added.
The scientists also discussed the possible future security and privacy concerns that could arise in the area of AI and also how it could help in transforming various sectors of economy, ranging from deep learning algorithms for cancer diagnosis, application of machine learning in order to discover new materials, the use of 3D printers in advanced manufacturing, to intelligent systems with cognition and decision making abilities. The government said.
“In biomedicine, there is a huge scope of growth by the use of AI. The first is that while we are very good at generating data, we do not necessarily know what to do with it. The second type of problem in biomedicine is that you know what to do, but only a few humans have been training to do it. The third problem is that we have the people, we have the process but do not have scale and sufficiency,” said Anurag Agarwal, Director, Institute of Genomics and Intergrative Biology. Focusing on the scope of AI in biomedicine.
“We have several areas that we envision working with the IUSSTF program on. We are also looking forward to leveraging this platform and its engagement to help bolster our existing bilateral energy partnerships in India, where we share priorities to modernize and strengthen the grid, enhance grid integration of renewables for reliable energy supply, promote smart and innovative efficient buildings and material and decarbonize and electrify the industrial sector,” said Elizabeth Urbanas, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Asia and the Americas, U.S Department of Energy.
