Indian Government Launches AI Compute Portal, Dataset Repository AIKosha to Boost Innovation

On Thursday, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) unveiled various artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives. The announcements were made to mark the first anniversary of the IndiaAI Mission, celebrated on March 7.

Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw launched the India AI Compute Portal at an event, aiming to offer accessible and cost-effective AI computing, networking, storage, platform, and cloud services. AIKosha, a digital archive featuring datasets and AI models, was also presented by the minister.

Per a report from the Press Information Bureau (PIB), Vaishnaw addressed an event in New Delhi and revealed the introduction of AIKosha and the AI Compute Portal. The former is a reliable platform featuring a collection of datasets, AI models, and use cases that facilitate AI advancement. The platform includes a sandbox environment, as well as tools and tutorials, to assist developers in testing and deploying AI models.

The AI Compute Portal is designed to offer companies and developers cost-effective AI processing and inference features, as well as resources for networking and storage. Vaishnaw emphasized that these two platforms will facilitate AI research and innovation in India, as reported by PIB. He further mentioned that the AI Compute Portal’s site will initially offer access to 10,000 GPUs, with an extra 8,693 GPUs set to be included later on. The platform seeks to offer computing services at a reduced cost to assist qualifying startups, researchers, and businesses.

Vaishnaw allegedly discussed the digital public infrastructure (DPI) framework related to AI. As per the framework, the datasets integrated into AIKosha were claimed to be ethically obtained and centered on content to lessen dependence on synthetic and external data.