Google invests $1 mn in IIT Madras’ new Centre for Responsible AI
Chennai: Google has shown faith in Indian Institute of Technology Madras’ (IIT Madras) newly fashioned Centre for Responsible Artificial Intelligence (CeRAI), marking its dedication with an preliminary funding of $1 million.
The announcement got here throughout the Centre’s inaugural workshop and panel dialogue held recently. The AI division of IIT Madras is slated to help analysis tasks and develop datasets for AI purposes.
CeRAI was formally inaugurated on April 27, with the ceremony presided over by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology.
The Centre has solid collaborations with the trade body Nasscom, Southern Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (SICCI), the coverage thinktank Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA)-affiliated thinktank Research and Information Systems (RIS).
These partnerships have an intention to advertise a accountable use of AI by educational curriculum growth, exploring implications of AI, growing a participative AI framework, and mentoring startups to create accountable AI purposes. The startup mentorship and incubation group, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE), may also be associated with CeRAI, as said in a press launch.
As a part of its AI coverage advocacy position, CeRAI will look to “formulate sector-specific tips and suggestions for policymakers”, according to a press statement by IIT Madras.
Balaraman Ravindran, head of CeRAI and Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and AI at IIT Madras, said upon the inauguration, “It is important for AI models and their predictions to be explainable and interpretable when they are to be deployed in various critical sectors, such as healthcare, manufacturing and banking and finance.
They also need to provide performance guarantees appropriate to the applications they are deployed in — which include data integrity, privacy and robustness of decision making.”
Abhishek Singh, managing director and chief government of the Centre’s Digital India Corporation, mentioned that it will be significant for policymakers and researchers to “concentrate on the dangers and challenges whereas utilizing applied sciences for fixing societal issues, making certain entry to healthcare, making healthcare extra reasonably priced, training extra inclusive, and agriculture extra productive.”
“There is a necessity for an unbiased and non-discriminatory AI framework as we’ve distinctive necessities that require customization as per our necessities,” he added.
To be sure, this is not the first industry-government-academia confluence on the development of responsible AI applications in India. In November last year, policy thinktank Niti Aayog published a discussion paper on the use of responsible AI in developing facial recognition technology infrastructure in the country. The Ministry of Electronics and IT (Meity), along with National e-Governance Division (NeGD) and Nasscom, has also published a responsible AI development ‘toolkit’ to support policy and application development under the ‘IndiaAI’ initiative.
While talks around explainability and responsibility of AI models have led to questions around regulating the nascent technology in Europe, union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in Parliament on 6 April that the Centre does not plan to adopt legislation to regulate the development of AI. However, he acknowledged ethical concerns around development of AI — which include racial bias, discrimination, violation of privacy and lack of visibility into AI decision-making.
During his response, Vaishnaw added that the Centre is working on standardizing and promoting “best practices” across the growth of accountable AI fashions.
