“Identify ten problems of the society that can be solved by AI”, Prime Minister Shri. Narendra Modi urged the citizens while addressing a post-budget webinar on “Unleashing the potential: ease of living using technology” on Tuesday. He added, “the technologies like AI and 5G are ruling the conversations now and are poised to transform areas like medicine, education, agriculture and others.”

PM assured us that this technology will help our country achieve its target of becoming a developed nation by the year 2047. He proclaims the modern infrastructure that has been created to ensure the digital revolution benefits will reach every citizen of India.

Abhishek Singh, President and CEO of NeGD, while moderating the first session of the webinar, mentioned the objective of implementing three AI CoEs at leading educational institutions in collaboration with other industries, academia and research entities in a hub and spoke model.

Debjani Ghosh, the president of NASSCOM, while addressing the post-budget webinar, claimed that the focus on building the centres of excellence that will help grow the emerging tech capacity and capability through the announcement like AI in India, 100 labs to develop 5G services effectively, will give a huge boost to our ability to improve the quality of life and improve the ease of living and improve the idea of ‘true citizen centric economy’.

She also reminded us that the “AI CoE announcement was not just about driving AI development in India, but it focused on making AI work for India”. She says that it is imperative for us to build responsible inclusion and security into the core design principle of AI innovation. “India has taken a huge step forward to strengthen its position to lead the development of responsible, secure and truly inclusive AI for all, which is absolutely the need of the hour,” Debjani said.

Lastly, she talked about the importance given to the data as the economy’s engine. She commented, “the idea of data governance is a key budget highlight. The plan to enable countries to set up data embassies makes us the first large country to propose this, and it will be an important step to strengthen data resilience for other countries”. She remarked that the 2023 budget could undoubtedly be called the ‘blueprint’ for achieving the vision we have set for India at 100.

Justice A Muhammed Mustaque, High Court of Kerala, while giving his speech, said Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence can bring a lot of visible changes in the judicial system as well. He believes using AI; we can bring changes in claims like a motor accident where it has to use predetermined data based on the declaration law. Quoting Prime Minister’s stress on making available the court orders in vernacular languages, he said that “Kerala has also done a remarkable job in making use of Suvas (Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software) a software for translating court statement written in English to vernacular languages and has successfully translated the judgements into Malayalam.”

Other industry experts like Srikanth Velamkanni, Co-founder of Fractal Analytics, Dr. Geetha Manjunath, CEO of Niramai, Sarika Gulyani, FCCI, also commented on the importance of centres of excellence in moulding India to reach global standards.