The New Education Policy (NEP) has acknowledged, in no uncertain terms, the importance of artificial intelligence and AI education in today’s time. To align India’s curriculum to the 21st century and to prepare the students for the AI economy, the policy lays profound emphasis on the need to impart the necessary technical knowledge at all levels of education. 

School children will be exposed to crucial skills such as digital literacy, coding and computational thinking from a young age, through the teaching of contemporary subjects such as Artificial Intelligence and Design Thinking. Further, topics such as artificial intelligence, 3-D machining, big data analysis and machine learning will be integrated with the undergraduate education to train industry-ready professionals. All universities will offer doctoral and Masters programmes in core areas such as Machine Learning. In addition, colleges may also offer targeted training in low-expertise tasks for supporting the AI value chain such as data annotation, image classification, and speech transcription.

"These are all part of developing 21st-century skills because education embeds these kinds of things to qualify the youngster with respect to what is needed in the 21st century which is communication, creativity, problem-solving and things of that type," Dr Kasturirangan, Chairman of the NEP drafting committee, told PTI.

Further, to make India a leading knowledge hub of disruptive technologies, the National Research Foundation (NRF) will promote high-quality research in the realm of science and technology. Given the rising applicability and falling costs of AI-based predictions, special focus has been given to promoting research in this domain. A three-pronged approach has been laid out to channel the research in AI, i.e. (a) advancing core AI research, (b) developing and deploying application-based research, and (c) establishing international research efforts to address global challenges in areas such as healthcare, agriculture, and climate change using AI.  

The policy also envisions the use of AI-powered solutions for the attainment of its goals of a multilingual as well as holistic education. The efforts of promoting multilingualism among the school students will be interlocked with efforts to enhance Natural Language Processing capabilities for India’s diverse languages. Additionally, AI will be used to track and record the life skills training of a child, with the aim to prepare a holistic report card.

Sethuraman T. A., Co-founder of AI-based EdTech organisation Jungroo Learning, told INDIAai, “The move from marks-focussed reporting to skills-focused reporting is a welcome move. We at Jungroo have always felt that we should move from marks-based reporting to understanding more about the student. The move from the focus on summative-based assessments to formative assessments is another great aspect that I am looking forward to. I believe AI can also play a crucial role here. We should use smart use of technologies such as AI in helping the stakeholders of the system by reducing their workload and making life easier by enabling them to focus on their core skills.”

In line with the national vision of Digital India, the policy has highlighted the symbiotic relationship between technology and education. The transformational journey of India will be catalysed through technological education and research, as provided for in the NEP; and advanced tech-driven solutions will transform the educational processes.

Commenting on the developments, Saraswathy Ramamoorthy, Co-founder and CMO of Learning Matters told INDIAai, “AI is going to play a critical role in education, and the sooner this is recognised, and AI-based efforts are encouraged, the better for our country. Learning Matters specifically is using AI to improve student learning outcomes and enhance teacher competency. There is going to be a boom in AI and IoT adoption globally, across industries and domains, sparked by COVID.” She added, “We need a workforce that has been trained in AI and related technologies. So, training in AI and related technologies must start early for students to later become the workforce that is able to successfully create, invent, and improve.”

The policy also aims to use education as a means to sensitise students to the issues and ethics surrounding AI. It recognises that holistic education of AI-based technologies can not be complete without raising awareness of issues such as data protection and privacy, and ethical concerns such as data bias.