Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. - John F. Kennedy

As rightly said by the honourable Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, “India is the world’s most youthful nation. A nation with such youth power cannot dream small. We should dream big, we should enable the youth to dream big and we should give them an opportunity to realize their dreams.”

In line with the Prime Minister’s vision on making India an AI hub, we need engagement and involvement from our citizens and need to encourage young minds towards the same. The government of India is working towards creating national AI strategies for the greater good of the citizens and society as a whole. 

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) has proposed as many as 20 AI (Artificial Intelligence) – based projects under the ‘Responsible AI for Youth programme,’ a programme designed to reach out to students from Government schools pan India and provide them with an opportunity to become part of the skilled workforce. The ministry has announced to felicitate as many as 27 government school students representing these projects across India.

Electronics and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnav recently announced the Centre’s plans to celebrate the occasion of Azadi Ka Digital Mahotsav Week. This included felicitating 13 girls and 14 boys from 14 states and one union territory for exceptional work through projects using Artificial Intelligence. These students were part of the programme designed by the National e-Governance Division “Responsible AI For Youth”. The programme was executed in three phases. During Phase 1 around 52,628 students from 35 states and UTs participated with 466 completing the first level AI training. Phase 2 involved the selection of 100 exemplary projects in various categories.

The young minds thoughtfully aimed at solving real-world problems with AI-powered technologies. From healthcare, education, agriculture, sustainability, pollution, waste management the students had thought of it all. It was heartening to see the enthusiasm of these students in adopting AI and related technology and envisioning it as a solution to many difficulties. 

Students from Kolkata displayed an AI-enabled chatbot; virtual assistant cum parental assistance that would help students in desperate times like loneliness, anxiety, exam stress, lack of friends, or introverted nature. AI scarecrow was another interesting project that aims to prevent crop damages due to animals and birds by warding them off using a smart visual AI model.

Soil analysis and recommendation, was another beautiful AI tool designed by a girl student aiming for better harvest through soil detection on parameters like humidity, temperature, and more. Boys from West Bengal displayed their project for assistance to visually impaired or blinds using TensorFlow named Helper for Visually challenged.

In another chatbot-based implementation, a girl student from MP presented her project based on NLP-based disease detection. Ayurtech Band is a lifestyle tracker that uses AI and combines it with Ayurveda to deal with initial levels of lifestyle-based health issues. Divyang Roshni, a computer vision-based Cerebral Palsy detector won people’s attention that helps in the early detection of the problem using contraction and relaxations of the muscles using AI all integrated into an app. This uses AI predictions that work on data collected from hospitals. 

Weed detector, another agriculture-assisting project uses AI to easily identify different types of weeds in farms and aids in their removal and provide info on prevention and removal measures. 

There were many more inspiring projects in areas like waste management, Body Tracker for fitness, live safer and Doctors helper for improving manpower issues in healthcare, Be attentive or Drowsiness detection in students for better student engagement in education.

 Seeing all these interesting contributions by these young minds definitely elates us all and we could wish them the best for their passions and ambitions. Hope we as a society be the enablers in providing a conducive environment for these young talents and future transformers to bloom and make a difference in the world. Initiatives like this from the government definetely provide direction, support, and mediums for making India proud as a technology-rich nation.