Deliberation on AI in Governance Hon’ble Union Minister, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad reviews the role and applications of Artificial Intelligence in e-Governance projects
Hon’ble Union Minister, E&IT and Law & Justice, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad addressing the participants
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to revolutionize the functioning of governments. Globally, its applications are growing based on its demand and potential to improve efficiency and quality of public services. These largely depend on how best the choices are made on how and where it can be applied.
To improve public governance, several deliberations have been already taken place in Indian government and at various levels. One among these was the recent workshop on AI, held under the chairmanship of Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Hon’ble Union Minister, E&IT. Organized on January 18th, 2018 with the participation of senior officials from government and experts from academia and industry, the workshop deliberated on the views, thoughts and ideas to create an ecosystem and policy framework.
Shri Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Smt. Neeta Verma, Director General, NIC, Shri D.C. Misra, DDG, NIC, Shri Gopala Krishnan S, Joint Secretary, MeitY, Prof. Narendra Ahuja, Director ITRA, Shri R. Chandrashekhar, President NASSCOM, Smt. Debjani Ghosh, NASSCOM and various other esteemed dignitaries attended the workshop.
Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, in his inaugural speech suggested to address all the connected issues such as use of Open Source for AI, Data Availability, Data Security etc. He encouraged the participants to create an ecosystem in the country for emerging technologies and to have AI for Digital Inclusion. He appealed to the representatives of Institutions and Industries to work in their own way for the growth of India.
Shri Ajay Sawhney highlighted the importance of AI in economic growth of the country and to solve Indian societal problems. He also pointed out that there is a need for a national framework for AI research and development with the participation of industry, academia and government.
Smt. Neeta Verma, presented various initiatives taken by NIC for the development of AI based applications such as Swachh Bharat Mission, AI enabled Chatbot for NIC Service Desk etc. Experts from leading academia, IITs, NIT, CDAC, NIC, IDRBT and ITRA presented their work, capabilities and applications on AI/ Machine Learning. They also highlighted various issues towards creating an ecosystem for Artificial Intelligence in India. Representatives from Google, IBM, NVIDIA, Microsoft and WIPRO made presentations and took part in the discussions.
Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad interacting with a participant through Video Conferencing