Tamil Nadu to Launch AI Labs to Support Startups and Academia.

The Tamil Nadu government is set to establish a Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Artificial Intelligence (AI), complete with AI lab infrastructure, to foster research and development in the field. Kumar Jayanth, Additional Chief Secretary of the Department of IT and Digital Services, announced the initiative at The Hindu’s AI Summit in Chennai on Thursday.

The AI labs and related infrastructure will be made available to startups, academic institutions, and other stakeholders at subsidized rates to encourage innovation in AI technology.

Tamil Nadu has already integrated AI into governance, utilizing it in sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, and public services. For instance, AI is used for facial recognition-based staff attendance and to improve services in healthcare. "While AI brings numerous benefits, we must address challenges such as biases in training datasets and the cognitive biases of those creating AI systems," Jayanth emphasized.

The summit, themed "From Hype to Hope to Reality: Turning Dreams into Destinies," focused on real-world AI adoption in both the public and private sectors. It featured panel discussions and talks by AI experts, business leaders, and policymakers.\

Supriya Sahu, Additional Chief Secretary of the Department of Health & Family Welfare, shared how AI is being used in Tamil Nadu to screen for Tuberculosis, noting that the AI-based method was twice as accurate as traditional approaches.

Addressing concerns about AI replacing jobs, Professor B. Ravindran, Head of Data Science & AI at IIT Madras, explained that while Generative AI has been around for decades, its real impact will be in how people use AI. "You won’t lose your job to AI, but to those who use AI effectively," he remarked.

HBL