Cabinet nod for India AI mission with Rs 10,372 crore outlay for 5 years

The Union Cabinet on Thursday evening approved an outlay of Rs 10,372 crore for five years for the India AI Mission, aimed at fostering innovation in artificial intelligence through public-private partnerships.

Ahead of the general elections, the government also announced the extension of Rs 300 per LPG cylinder subsidy to poor women under the Ujjwala Yojana for the next financial year starting April 1. The move, likely to benefit nearly 100 million families, will cost the government Rs 12,000 crore, according to a PTI report.

The government had in October last year hiked the subsidy from Rs 200 per 14.2-kg cylinders for up to 12 refills per year to Rs 300 per bottle. The Rs 300 per cylinder subsidy was for 2023-24.

Under the India AI Mission, a key focus area is to develop high-end compute capacity within the country, for which the government will facilitate the setting up of more than 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) under the public-private partnership (PPP) model.

Additionally, an AI marketplace will be created to offer AI-as-a-service and pre-trained models to innovators.

Of the total outlay around Rs 4,500 crore would be used for building compute infrastructure and close to Rs 2,000 crore has been earmarked for financing deep-tech startups.

The India AI mission aims to develop foundational models with a capacity of more than 100 billion parameters. These models will be trained on datasets covering major Indian languages for priority sectors such as health care, agriculture, and governance. AI curation units (ACUs) will also be developed in 50-line ministries.

“PM Narendra Modi Ji has democratised technology. With the AI mission, he will make compute power available to innovators, startups, students, and educational institutions,” said Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.

Announcing Cabinet decisions, Piyush Goyal, minister of commerce and industry, consumer affairs, food and public distribution, and textiles said: “Today the Union Cabinet has approved the AI mission and the capital outlay. We will be coming out with the scheme guidelines and will notify the selection process of the private partners.”

“It will be completely competition-based with equal opportunities for everyone to participate. We will be encouraging research and innovation institutes, and Indian startups to play an important role in the proliferation of AI,” he said.

The mission will also focus on accelerating deep-tech AI startups. For skilling and talent development, the mission will work towards increasing AI courses at undergraduate, master’s, and PhD levels.

It will be implemented by an ‘IndiaAI’ Independent Business Division (IBD) under the Digital India Corporation (DIC). This division will also provide early-stage financing to deep-tech AI startups.

As part of the programme, the government plans to set up an India AI datasets platform to streamline the use of non-personal data by different stakeholders within the country. “The unified data platform will serve as a one-stop solution for accessing non-personal data,” Goyal said.

To promote the development and deployment of indigenous large multimodal models (LMMs) and domain-specific foundational models in critical sectors, the government has proposed the establishment of up to three India AI innovation centres.

An IndiaAI Application Development Initiative will also be launched as part of the programme. This initiative will promote the development of AI applications in critical sectors, addressing problem statements sourced from central ministries, state departments, and other institutions, the minister said.

Following the announcement, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar in a post on X said: “I am grateful to the Hon’ble PM for approving more than Rs 10,000 crore for the India AI programme. This will catalyse India’s AI ecosystem.”

Under this mission, data and AI labs will be established in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities across India to provide foundational-level courses.

The approved project will also work towards establishing guardrails to advance the responsible development, deployment, and adoption of AI. This includes the development of indigenous tools and frameworks, self-assessment checklists for innovators, and other guidelines and governance frameworks.

Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the India AI Mission during his address at the GPAI summit in Delhi. “As part of this mission, the application of artificial intelligence technologies will be promoted in sectors, such as agriculture, health care and education,” he had announced.

Centre hikes DA to 50% of basic pay

Ahead of the general elections, the Union Cabinet on Thursday approved additional instalment of Dearness Allowance (DA) for Central Government employees and Dearness Relief (DR) to pensioners by 4 percentage points to 50 per cent of basic pay and pension. This will be effective from 1 January, 2024, benefitting about 4.9 million Central Government employees and 6.8 million pensioners “to compensate against price rise”.

Industrialisation scheme for N-E

The Cabinet also approved an industrialisation scheme for the North-East region named Uttar Poorva Transformative Industrialization Scheme, 2024 (UNNATI – 2024) for a period of 10 years from the date of notification along with 8 years for committed liabilities at a total cost of Rs 10,037 crore. The maximum eligible benefits to one unit from all components of the scheme is Rs 250 crore.

First Published: Mar 07 2024 | 10:13 PM IST

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