Mumbai, Jan 1 (IANS) Maharashtra’s Information and Technology Minister Ashish Shelar has announced that the state government will soon come out with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy to shape the future of industries, businesses and governance and recognise its transformative potential.
He has directed the department to draft the AI policy.
Minister Shelar instructed the department that the era of AI technology has begun and Maharashtra must seize the opportunity to become a leader in this space.
“By leveraging AI, we can attract more industries and businesses, create employment opportunities for the youth and position Maharashtra as a formidable player,” said the Minister during his meeting with the department officers.
“The India AI Mission, launched in March this year with an allocation of Rs 10,372 crore focuses on advancing AI capabilities across the nation with special allocations for the India AI Datasets Platform, Application Development initiatives, Graphic Processing Units, India AI Innovation Centre, Future Skills Programme and financing startups in the AI space. It is important to align Maharashtra’s AI aspirations with these national efforts so that the state emerges as a leader in the AI revolution,” said Shelar.
According to the Minister, the Central government plans to start the collection and aggregation of non-personal datasets to build a comprehensive database that will power the India AI Datasets Platform from January 2025. This will enable seamless access to startups, companies, academics and researchers to develop applications, interface with language models and offer specialized services.
“It is important that Maharashtra works towards positioning itself at the forefront of India’s technological advancement while contributing to the nation’s vision of becoming a global AI leader,” said Shelar.
Minister Shelar’s statement comes after the state body MITRA, which has been established on the lines of NITI Aayog, has recently recommended the development of sovereign AI with the establishment of a joint government and private sector company with 49 per cent – 51 per cent equity holding through a competitive selection process involving credible IT companies. IT firms specialising in AI, machine learning (ML) and Quantum Computing will have free access to large, high-quality, machine-reachable public datasets for the first two years. It has emphasised the need for establishing an Investment Fund to finance AI and Quantum Computing startups.
–IANS
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