An athlete turned technological expert- the story of Puhabi Chakraborti took a turn when she started training in karate and kickboxing when she was 11 years old. She pushed the age barriers when she qualified for the black belt in Karate and won two gold medals and one bronze medal for India in an international tournament. Financial expenses are not ignorable when participating in athletic events. In situations where athletes find it difficult to find external funding, families will often have to support them. Therefore, the mental pressure on a person who fails in the only match they could participate in for a year can be overwhelming. 

Similarly, the diet of athletes varies according to their sport. Puhabi also had to go through several hardships concerning maintaining good mental and physical health during her sports journey. Thus, she decided to take matters into her hands and built an AI model collecting real-time data from her fellow mates. She named it AthleteX for Atmanirbhar Athlete. 

Puhabi developed AtheletX with the help of Intel AI couches while she was participating in the Government of India’s national program for Government Schools- Responsible AI for youth. The program, which intended to make the youth AI-ready and reduce the AI skill gap in India, lasted for almost one year, where AI-based student projects were selected from government schools across the country. Initially, responsible AI commenced with more than fifty thousand students participating. Qualifying various levels, Puhabi was among the 20 winners of the program. Responsible AI opened a window of opportunities for Puhabi. This 16-year-old, who is currently preparing for her 10th-grade board exam, is also pursuing two internships- in California and New York. “Training I received in Responsible AI helped me in my internships, " says Puhabi. During her internship, she built a model called “Spirometer” based on a GUI she developed for helping COVID-19 patients. In 2022, she was awarded the Pradhan Manthri Rastriya Bal Puraskar, the highest civilian award for children in India. 

AthleteX and Journey to Responsible AI 

“Even though I did not know much about it, I loved coding from a very young age”, said Puhabi when asked about her journey to Responsible AI. It was her teacher in school who told her about the program. She submitted around 7 to 8 project ideas, and AthleteX was selected. Puhabi smiled with pride when she spoke about making the first earning of her life through responsible AI- a laptop and free data for three months provided only to the students who qualified for the top 100 list. However, due to school examinations, Puhabi could not attend the final Responsible AI event organised in Delhi. 

Responsible AI taught her ANN, CNN, Python, Machine Learning and Deep Learning. AthleteX is an application with three parts- Mental health, physical health and diet. Puhabi states that she used different algorithms for different parts- CNN for physical health, ANN for mental health and general looping for diet. A PSQ questionnaire released by the American Psychological Association was also used to collect data.  

Though it was intended for athletes, the model can be used by anyone who wishes to lead a healthy life. While presenting the Bal Puraskaar to Puhabi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that the AI-based AthleteX would be valuable in the government’s attempts to build a healthy India. 

Moving ahead 

According to Puhabi, “AI is beneficial for humanity as a whole”. In a country like India, where the number of villages is more, there are limitations for small states like Tripura compared to metro cities like Delhi or Mumbai. “Buying things that I might need for research is very difficult while living in Tripura due to issues of accessibility”, says Puhabi. But she believes that an added advantage exists since AI and ML can be learned while staying at home. Puhabi, who desires to become a professor in Mechatronics, opines that anyone interested in building a career in AI should work hard and achieve it because the innovations it brings result in positive changes in the community, we live in.