On June 13, Microsoft launched AI Digital Labs in India in collaboration with 10 institutes of higher education. Under this three-year programme, Microsoft will provide infrastructure, curriculum, training, access to cloud and AI services, and developer tools and support. This venture will train nearly 1.5 lakh students, the company says. The 10 institutions are: BITS Pilani, BML Munjal University, ISB, Kalpataru Institute of Technology, KL University, Periyar University, Karunya University, SRM Institute of Science & Technology, SVKM (NMIMS) and Trident Academy of Technology. “As AI becomes mainstream, organisations will require talent with skillsets that are very different from what exists now. Educators and institutions are integral to the skilling revolution taking root in the country,” said Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India. Microsoft’s role in the programme Setting up core AI infrastructure and IoT Hub Providing access to AI developmental tools and Azure AI Services (Microsoft Cognitive Services, Azure Machine Learning, Bot Services) Training programmes for faculty — workshops on cloud computing, data sciences, AI, and IoT; assistance in strategising content and curricula Microsoft’s AI ventures in India In October 2018, NITI Aayog and Microsoft India signed an agreement to deploy AI technologies to advance agriculture, healthcare, natural language computing, and a sustainable environment. Under the agreement, MS India would provide its cloud, AI, research and vertical expertise to NITI Aayog. In September 2018, Microsoft India made the Microsoft Indian Language Speech Corpus available for researchers and academics who were building Indian-language speech recognition for all applications in which speech is…
