Government of Telangana, on Thursday officially declared the year 2020 as the year of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and signed eight Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with various companies and educational institutes during a meeting held with top industries and academia.
Intel, Public Health Foundation of India and Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad jointly signed the agreement with the government for setting up a research centre in applied AI in healthcare and smart mobility.
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur signed an MoU to set up a centre of excellence in AI and research and development park.
The state government also signed MoUs with IIT Hyderabad, Wadhwani AI, Hexagon and Innovation Norway.
The MoUs were signed in presence of KT Rama Rao, IT and Industries Minister, Telangana. During his special address, Rao said, “In line with our vision and our approach, AI will be our focus for the coming year and beyond. While we are calling 2020 as the ‘Year of AI,’ this event would set in motion a set of initiatives, which would potentially make the next decade as Telangana’s decade of AI.”
He also added that the efforts in AI would take forward and add to Telangana’s growth story which aims to establish Hyderabad as among the top 25 global AI innovation hubs. Emphasising this, Rao stated, “Government of Telangana doesn’t believe in working in silos. While we have identified different emerging technologies, we have also decided that we cannot do it by ourselves and have chosen to combine forces with industries and institutions. We believe this approach, we will be able to cross the 25 billion mark and increase the number of jobs.”
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Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, IT and Industries, Government of Telangana said, “As part of the ‘Year of AI’ there would be year-long programmes and activities in the emerging technology and some of them are long-term in nature.”