Agriculture has been one of the priority sectors for government and it is the right time to bring digital technology-led revolution in this sector: KTR
Hyderabad: IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao on Wednesday said the State government declared the year 2020 as the Year of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate AI readiness and develop a conducive AI innovation ecosystem in the State. He said efforts are on to open new avenues of AI-led innovation for social impact especially in the public sector.
He was delivering a keynote address at the launch of ‘AI4AI: Artificial Intelligence for Agricultural Innovation’ in collaboration with Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR), World Economic Forum (WEF)-India through virtual conference from Hyderabad on Wednesday. A team from C4IR, WEF India has worked closely with Prof Jayashankar Telangana State Agriculture University and the State government’s Information Technology and Communications department to identify high impact use cases of AI – which would benefit both the farmers and the policy-makers.
Rama Rao stated that agriculture has been one of the priority sectors for the State government and it was the right time to bring digital technology-led revolution in this sector. “We strongly feel that AI will offer immense possibilities for the farmers, governments and all other stakeholders of the ecosystem,” he said. He was euphoric to partner with WEF to lead the government-led agritech innovation. He said the State had clearly defined its vision to be a global leader in emerging technologies including AI and has made rapid strides towards achieving the vision.
The Minister listed out a slew of initiatives taken by the State government by partnering with reputed organisations from industry and academia in this regard. In consultation with experts from industry, academia, startup community and civil society, the State government developed a six-pronged AI strategy for Telangana State. “We also launched T-AIM (Telangana’s AI Mission) which is a dedicated body for AI specific initiatives in association with NASSCOM. Another organisation – Centre for Research in Applied AI (CRiAA) was launched in collaboration with Intel, IIIT-Hyderabad and Public Health Foundation of India with special focus on healthcare. Today, we are launching AI4AI programme with C4IR,” he explained.
Speaking on the occasion, NITI Aayog chief executive officer (CEO) Amitabh Kant appreciated the Telangana State government in taking the lead in the AI space. “We are happy to be partnering with Telangana in piloting many AI programmes in agriculture initiatives. There is no better place than Telangana in our country for this initiative and we are happy to work with Minister KT Rama Rao,” he said.
Several dignitaries including WEF C4IR chief advisor J Satyanarayana, WEF LLC managing director Murat Sonmez, Union Ministry of Agriculture joint secretary Vivek Aggarwal, and Union Ministry of Electronics and IT secretary Ajay Sawhney, participated in the virtual session.
