The US technology behemoth Google has been named the first "platinum consortium" member of the Centre for Responsible Artificial Intelligence (CeRAI) at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), recognising its commitment with an initial investment of $1 million.

 

The statement was made at the opening workshop for the Centre. IIT Madras' AI section will fund research initiatives and provide datasets for AI applications.

 

On April 27, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, officiated at the ceremony to officially inaugurate CeRAI.

 

The Centre has formed partnerships with the trade association Nasscom, the Southern Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (SICCI), the policy thinktank Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, and the thinktank Research and Information Systems (RIS), which is associated with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

 

Through the establishment of academic curricula, investigating AI's ramifications, creating a participatory AI framework, and coaching companies to develop responsible AI applications, these partnerships seek to promote the responsible use of AI. According to a news release, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE), a startup mentoring and incubation organisation, will also be affiliated with CeRAI.

 

Balaraman Ravindran, head of CeRAI and Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and AI at IIT Madras, said upon the inauguration, “It is important for AI models and their predictions to be explainable and interpretable when they are to be deployed in various critical sectors, such as healthcare, manufacturing and banking and finance. They also need to provide performance guarantees appropriate to the applications they are deployed in — which include data integrity, privacy and robustness of decision making."