AI Progress

"AI’s disruptive potential in the workplace is clear, and the education system must be poised to respond quickly.” - National Education Policy (2020), India.

The acronym AI is everywhere these days. In the below illustration, obtained using Google nGram, you can see a comparison of the frequencies of words mechanical, electrical and computer science with artificial intelligence, in printed sources published between 1840 and 2019 (in a huge text corpora created by Google). This serves as quick snapshot highlighting the rise of AI.

Selected Data Science & AI Reports from India and Outside

You can gather more insights into the progress made in AI by taking a look at the in-depth reports widely available on the web. Below we list some of the reports we have found useful.


AI Initiatives

There are several initiatives by numerous organizations around the world. Some of these initiatives are launched at national level by the government to help democratize the benefits of AI-based applications, and others are lanuched by independent organizations. Below is a list of small sample of these initiatives.

  • Digital India, by Government of India.
  • India AI, a MIETY, NEGD & NASSCOM Initiative.
  • AI 4 Bharat, an initiative of IIT Madras, is on building open-source language AI for Indian languages.
  • Kaggle Datasets, a collection of varied kinds of open-acess datasets and machine learning challenges.

Dataset Portals

Data Science needs data. You never know what kind of information you’ll find when analyzing a particular dataset. Sometimes it can be an eye-opener! To get started with your own analysis, you may find the below portals useful. Many of these host open-access datasets.

Global and National

Brain Imaging Dataset Portals
  • OpenNEURO. A free and open platform for validating and sharing BIDS-compliant MRI, PET, MEG, EEG, and iEEG data
  • SWADESH, by NINS Lab, NBRC

Speech and Text Dataset Portals

Weather and Climate Dataset Portals

Data Science and AI Institutes in India

Recently, recognizing the need to create AI-skilled diverse workforce, multiple universities in India and abroad have launched Undergrdaruate (BTech and BS), Masters and PhD programs in Data Science and AI. While a number of India’s higher education institutions are well on their way to delivering new AI and DS programs, many other institutions are just beginning the journey. Following are links to DS and AI departments at some of the prominent universities in India.