Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw spoke at Lok Sabha. File | Image Source: Sansad TV
Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the Indian Artificial Intelligence (AI) mission chaired by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has signed a memorandum of understanding with the parliament to access its data to train indigenous AI models, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Tuesday (18 March 2025).
During a panel discussion on the Raisina dialogue in New Delhi, Mr Vaishnaw said that under Indian AI missions, 14,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) were provided in common computing facilities. Computing tasks such as machine learning require the application of GPU-based operations on large data sets.
“The parliamentary datasets will be a great resource for training our models, and likewise, Doordarshan and All India Radio are other sources of large datasets available,” Mr Vaishnaw said.
He said: “No matter what the world says, if today’s open source might not be open source tomorrow, then we’ll see that when we open AI.
Mr Vaishnaw said the government is working with the industry to evaluate options and plans to be among professors and startups willing to build LLM for India.
He took the example of 5G technology training students, and he said nearly 100 labs were built in universities so that students could understand the technology in a real environment. Similarly, in the case of semiconductors, the latest tools for training chip design have been provided to 240 educational institutions. “AI will take a similar approach,” he said.
Mr Vaishnaw said that in the next three to five years, India will develop the ability to get the GPU up and running.
“To do this, we are using two different types of instruction set evaluation methods, or both, and we will finalize the experts to decide.”
Despite the U.S. tariff war and export control escalation, Mr. Vaishnaw said the goal is to focus on know-how and models. He said: “How do we build partnerships in India and the United States?
“We provide any country with abundant resources that the foundation we build with us is trust and respect for IP rights is to jointly create and jointly develop technology.
He said India is adopting a foreign policy with pragmatism. He said: “The world today is different from the situation of victory, and in the world of technology, it’s a win-win situation.
Prioritizing AI use cases, Mr Vaishnaw said, suggesting that AI’s application in healthcare, agriculture, weather forecasting and education remains the leader on the agenda.
He added: “The AI revolution is just the beginning, and what we see now is the first chapter of the whole book.”
He cites examples of using very frugal but effective applications, such as in the Balamati region of Maharashtra, where farmers’ sugarcane yields tripled due to the use of AI.
He cites maintenance cases in an industry where applications are performing the heavy task of visualizing components in hard-to-reach machine areas with computer vision AI cameras.
Mr Vaishnaw said India’s direct goal in the AI competition is to provide the right tools and skills for startups, academia and researchers so that the IT industry can help with this. In the mid-term, India needs to set up its LLM and universities need to change courses to generate ongoing, well-trained talent.
He said: “When AI mathematics is applied to new networks, we will bring changes that we cannot even imagine.
publishing – March 19, 2025 12:04 AM IST
