The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT KGP) launched AI drives for future Indian engineers in Bengaluru and Kharagpur earlier this week.
The IIT- Kharagpur has been organising several outreach programmes related to technology and its challenges and applications, in light of the Centre of Excellence for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence that was launched earlier this year.
Around 1,100 upcoming engineers met with industry experts, researchers, and entrepreneurs at the twin Artificial Intelligence (AI) summit organised by the institute and its alumni at Bengaluru and in Kharagpur.
According to a release issued by the IIT-Kharagpur, the summits that were conducted over Saturday and Sunday brought together stakeholders engaged in cutting-edge developments in AI or making use of AI applications in their field of work.
The release noted that the engineers from the two cities delved into the challenges related to illiteracy, hunger, disease, natural disasters, speech recognition, advanced transportation, consumer behaviour, market analytics etc. – and how AI can be used to solve them.
The summits focused on challenges and applications of AI which are directly going to impact people’s lives significantly in the future.
The Centre of Excellence for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence was launched by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM). The objective is to support SMBs (small and medium businesses), by enhancing the rate of product development, providing access to the market, and assisting them by co-creating programs along with other industry partners and start-ups.
Professor Pallab Dasgupta, Dean, Sponsored Research & Industrial Consultancy said that adopting AI on a large scale in India, given that the country already has a lot going for it by way of digital penetration, its huge talent pool, and its proven ability to scale up new technology.
In the AI summit organised by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Centre for AI in Kharagpur, researchers and industry experts demonstrated how AI was being used in their respective fields, including retail, banking, healthcare, transport, and education.
In the two-day event at Bengaluru, Professor P.P. Chakrabarti, Director at the IIT-Kharagpur discussed the roadmap of the Centre for AI with corporations, start-ups, and industry experts. Many of them included the alumni of the Institute who have been successful proponents of various AI technologies.
This year, IIT- Kharagpur has been working to include more AI-centred programmes and in August started a course for Artificial Intelligence in law this week. The one-semester inter-disciplinary course was developed at the Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Rights (RGSOIPL) with the intent to study the modes of societal governance and law
The Dean of RGSOIPL said that the course addresses the paradigm shifts that are occurring due to the intense involvement of AI. Autonomous systems can possibly invent, participate in inventions with humans, create new expressions like music, paintings, and raising sensitive questions on inventorship, authorship, ownership of patents, copyright and designs.
