TS excels in AI with actionable policy

Hyderabad: With a foresight and deep understanding of emerging technologies such as the artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) role in impacting lives, 2020 was declared as Telangana’s Year of AI by the IT Minister KT Rama Rao. Telangana became the first State in India to launch an actionable policy framework for AI in June 2020 in consultation with industry, academia, startups and civil society. The initiative’s success report has been unveiled on Saturday.

The IT minister KT Rama Rao released the report “Telangana’s Year of AI – 2020 and Beyond” in Hyderabad, which highlights the AI Framework that outlines the six-pronged strategy to achieve the vision of positioning Telangana as a global hub for AI and foster social innovation.

Data exchange platform and HPAIC, research & innovation, skilling and education, governance, ethics and privacy, enabling adoption and community collaboration and AI innovestment fund had been identified as some of the major pillars for the State’s AI Framework. The government identified healthcare, agriculture, mobility, education, and law enforcement as the major areas of focus.

KTR believed AI revolution is expected to transform the global economy and early adopters will have first-mover advantage. Therefore, the Telangana government has set a vision to accelerate AI readiness and develop a conducive ecosystem in the State.

“We commemorated 2020 as the Telangana’s Year of AI last year on 2nd January 2020. Exactly one year later, I am elated to share the success of the Year of AI programme, which did not just survive the pandemic, but also thrived in it. The initiative has been a catalyst, which has today catapulted Telangana to the forefront of the AI race to excellence,” said KT Rama Rao.

Telangana AI Mission (T-AIM)

The government has set up T-AIM (Telangana AI Mission) to drive the implementation of the AI Framework. It was logical next step after launching the framework. The centre houses a dedicated team of experts to turn the State’s AI vision into reality. It is a new AI-specific organisation established in partnership with Nasscom, driving execution of each of the six pillars of Telangana’s AI Framework.

Applied AI Research Centre

A global applied AI research centre was launched with a focus on healthcare and mobility domains. Intel, IIITH and PHFI are the other co-founding partners in this initiative.

In the healthcare space, the focus has been on areas such as diagnostics, proactive public health, health services otimisation, evidence-based social strategy & policy and treatment protocols discovery. In the mobility domain, wide ranging areas such as advanced safety, autonomous navigation, traffic management and smart cities, sensing and communication, delivery and supply chain automation are being looked at.

CRDET establishment

Centre for Responsible Deployment of Emerging Technologies (CRDET), a virtual multidisciplinary centre has been established in collaboration with the Centre for Fourth Industrial Revolution, India, World Economic Forum.

With an initial focus on agriculture and law enforcement, the centre will address key scaling challenges by developing evidence-based recommendations on policy and commercial deployment of identified use cases. It will also identify the key AI ethical concerns -such as accountability, bias, transparency, privacy, security and safety and develop guidelines for specific AI use cases.

Collaborative efforts

Several initiatives and activities had been launched by partners such as Intel, International Institute of Information Technology-Hyderabad, Public Health Foundation of India, Centre for 4th Industrial Revolution-World Economic Forum, Amazon Web Services, nVIDIA, Microsoft, Wadhwani AI, Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad, Hexagon, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-Hyderabad, Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University and others.

“I take great pride in Telangana’s multi-lateral collaborative approach and take this opportunity to thank the efforts of our active ecosystem partners in Telangana,” said Jayesh Ranjan, IT principal secretary.

AI-focused events

In all over 120 events were organised throughout the year including Agritech Grand Challenge and ExperienceAI. These events focused on several aspects including AI adoption for accelerating Digital India, unlocking value at scale & simplifying AI journey for enterprises, and reimagining innovation in the Covid world.

Telangana government also showcased its AI vision at RAISE (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment) 2020 where the State shared the success of Telangana’s Year of AI programme, organised a panel discussion among eminent partners of Telangana’s Year of AI programme and demonstrated cutting-edge solutions developed by Telangana-based startups.

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