India AI Mission, Gates Foundation to create AI solutions
Union Minister for Railways, Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw announced on Wednesday that a collaboration between India AI Mission and the Gates Foundation is in the works to create AI-based solutions for key sectors in India.
In a post on X, Vaishnaw said that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will soon be signed to strengthen healthcare, agriculture, education, and climate resilience through AI.
“AI solutions for better crops, stronger healthcare, smarter education and climate resilience—MoU soon between India AI Mission and @gatesfoundation,” Vaishnaw tweeted after meeting Bill Gates, who is currently visiting India.
As part of its India AI Mission, the government recently launched AIKosha, the country’s sovereign datasets platform, and an AI Compute Portal to facilitate access to quality datasets and computing resources for AI development.
The government has also set a target of developing GPUs domestically within the next three to five years as part of the larger ₹10,000-crore India AI Mission. About 14,000 GPUs have gone live, with another 4,000 in the pipeline.
Earlier, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) announced the procurement of 18,693 GPUs from selected vendors.
According to Vaishnaw, ministries related to agriculture, weather forecasting, and the Bhashini language platform have already contributed data to the AIKosha platform.
“India’s own AI foundational model is progressing well; we have 67 applications, of which 22 are for developing large language models (LLMs),” Vaishnaw said earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, visited NITI Aayog’s Viksit Bharat Strategy Room (VBSR) on Monday. He experienced an advanced AI-enabled immersive centre designed to enhance evidence-based decision-making for policymakers across the country.
The Viksit Bharat Strategy Room was launched on March 7, 2024, as a key step toward data-driven governance.
