Govt opens portals to fuel India's AI mission

The Union government on Thursday launched two new platforms under its IndiaAI Mission: the IndiaAI Datasets Platform (called AIKosha) and the IndiaAI Compute Portal.

- Aditi Agrawal

NEW DELHI:

AIKosha provides access to multiple datasets and models to develop artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The compute portal allows researchers, academics, and startups to request access to powerful computing resources made available through more than 14,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) from 10 companies at subsidised cost.

On the AIKosha portal, the ministry outlined eight use cases to illustrate how the datasets and models can be used to enhance public services. For instance, AI voice assistants for rural citizens could be built using datasets of voice samples from Indian languages and dialects. These assistants could help people to apply for government schemes and use voice verification to prevent duplicate applications and fraudulent subsidy claims.

The AI Compute Portal, which was launched on Wednesday, will give researchers, academics, and startups access to 14,517 empanelled GPUs. Until now, requests for access to the computing resources were being sent to the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) through emails. These requests will now be processed through the portal, which will become fully operational within days.

The IndiaAI Mission was launched on March 7, 2024, with a budget of ₹10,371.92 crore. Of this amount, 44% (₹4,563.36 crore) is earmarked to provide computing capacity through 10,000 GPUs, which represents the largest of the mission's seven pillars. "The teams that bid for compute capacity have said that they will add more GPUs every quarter," IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said. Sunil Gupta, CEO and co-founder of Yotta, said that the company, which is providing 9,216 GPUs (about 63% of all approved GPUs in the first phase), will also apply in the second bidding round that closes on April 30.