Source: newindianexpress.com
CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu will be offering insights into its initiatives in Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Friday during the global virtual summit on Responsible AI for Social Empowerment or RAISE 2020 in New Delhi.
Santosh Mishra, Chief Executive Officer of the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA), told The New Indian Express that only Tamil Nadu and Telangana have been given slots on highlighting their initiatives in Artificial Intelligence during the global summit.
“We have been given a two-hour slot where Information Technology Minister R B Udaya Kumar would be highlighting the state’s initiatives in tapping Artificial Intelligence as well as becoming the first state to come out with ethical AI, cybersecurity and blockchain policies. We will also be having a panel discussion during the event,” said Mishra.
Additional chief secretary Hans Raj Verma, who heads the Information Technology department along with Mishra, Sridhar Vembu, chief executive officer of Zoho Corporation, Raj Cherubal, chief executive officer of Chennai Smart City, Jitender Singh Minhas, CEO IAMAI Start-up Foundation, Dr Ashfaq Bhat, Director of Norway India Partnership Initiative (NIPI) and Tathagato Rao Dastidar, CEO of Sig-Tupple will be participating in the discussion which focuses on Artificial Intelligence in governance.
Interestingly, this comes after Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad appreciated Tamil Nadu for bringing out policies on ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity during RAISE 2020, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.
Tamil Nadu has been using Artificial Intelligence on pest identification in agriculture, said Mishra adding that it is benefitting five lakh farmers. “We have been using artificial intelligence-based pest identification in crops which was developed in-house and integrated into the Uzhavan app,” he said.
Under this, a farmer can take a picture of the crop affected by pests and upload it on the app. Following this, agriculture department officials will come out with a solution, he added.
The other major successful project using artificial intelligence is marking attendance of government school students using facial recognition system. The project helped in saving time of teachers in marking attendance, said Mishra.
Similarly, the state has also come out with a Tamil chatbot named Anil (squirrel in Tamil). Mishra said using Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence technology development in collaboration with Anna University, the chatbot will guide and advise people on services offered by various government departments.
RAISE 2020, the biggest artificial intelligence summit, seeks global collaboration for the development of an artificial intelligence ecosystem that is responsible for humanity and committed towards social empowerment.
