Thursday, June 27, 2024

Mr CBN Must Take AP “from Talking About AI to Applying AI" …


“People are going to use these [AI] tools to invent the future that we all collectively live in”, said Sam Altman, Open AI CEO to NBC News anchor at the 20th Aspen Ideas Festival held from June 23 to 29, 2024.

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The first cabinet meeting of the NDA government of AP chaired by Mr Chandrababu Naidu that was held last Monday discussed the state of affairs in AP and took a few critical decisions. Amongst them, there is one interesting decision that is pretty forward-looking: The cabinet approved “a skill census considering a family as a unit for assessment to impart industry-ready skills and enhance the scope of employment”.

AP government’s interest in imparting industry-ready skills to youth is all the more encouraging to hear, for in the rapidly evolving business landscape, companies are hurrying to harness the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive innovation, make data-driven decisions, and create a competitive edge over the rest.

This has created a high demand for AI engineers, for it has great potential to improve and simplify tasks commonly done by humans such as speech recognition, image processing, business process management and even the diagnosis of a disease.

Interestingly, seized of the prospects of AI technology, the Central government had already approved spending Rs. 10,000 cr on the IndiaAI Mission that involves bringing AI compute capacity under the public-private partnership mode through GPU-based servers, allocating early-stage funding to deep-tech start-ups, setting up of innovation centers and developing broader AI sovereign infrastructure. According to the Ministry of Electronics and IT, it is likely to go up to Rs. 20,000 cr owing to additions of certain components.

All this throws open a new channel for Mr Naidu—a Chief Minister known to be far ahead of others in harnessing the power of IT—for creating employment potential for the youth of AP.

Analysts opine that by 2027, India is likely to overtake the US as the largest software developer community in the world. Now, with the widespread adoption of generative AI tools, software developer’s productivity is predicted to grow by 55%. One estimate reveals that by 2030, developer AI tools are likely to boost global GDP by $1.5 tn.

In such an emerging scenario, imagine what India is likely to gain if only its burgeoning developer community is trained in time to adopt the newfound AI tools for coding. Another advantage that the experts claim out of such convergence between software engineering and AI is: we get the best of both worlds: likely to not only speed up coding but also impart the advantage of the end product being both precise and flexible.

Now taking a lead from these prospects, AP government may have to launch early training programs to reskill the software developers to use AI tools. Secondly, looking at the ongoing fusion between human and machine languages, IT professionals advise that even our school-going children can be trained to program in Telugu language.

In this context, they even cite the New Education Policy of 2020 which proposed that coding classes may be conducted for school children from class 6 onwards. Now they also say that children can learn coding with the help of AI assistant—all in Telugu.

So, what it all means is: it is not English learning that matters most, but grounding the boys and girls soundly in Maths and Science is what matters to nudge the youngsters to pick up interest in STEM careers right from a very young age. Such a move is certain to keep the flow of software developers from AP ever-growing which ultimately could make the state quite wealthy.

The availability of powerful open-source AI models has made the job of the AP government that much more affordable to undertake not only training programs for youth but also to resolve many societal challenges. For instance, on the lines of e-seva kendras that he conceptualized/established in the past, Mr Naidu may now think of establishing a network of Arogya kendras (Health Care Centers) using AI-developed tools to dispense primary healthcare advice to rural folks. Such an arrangement can enable people to walk-in into these Kendras to spell out their health problems/recite symptoms and get preliminary advice promptly and rightly. These Centers can even be enabled to offer advice by scanning through X-ray and MRI images. In a way, such elimination of the human interface may enhance the scope of the marginalized lot to get the right advice well in time with no hassles.

That being the prospects thrown open by the AI, it is now for Mr Naidu to use his ingenuity to create excellent training facilities across the geography of AP—in short, create such atmospherics that could motivate students to get themselves trained in using AI tools and get ready to launch themselves as well-equipped coders for the world to benefit, besides, of course, benefiting themselves. Of course, in all these endeavors, guardrails are crucial.

Exploiting this convergence between software engineering and AI technology today with a right training package—both for the already employed developers whose jobs are threatened by AI and students—Mr Naidu can build a bright future for his State.

No wonder, if Mr Naidu is already at it!

                  

 

 

 

 

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