Microsoft to skill 10 lakh Indian students in Artificial Intelligence
Microsoft, along with NASSCOM, aims to skill 10 lakh students in India in Artificial Intelligence by 2021.
The AI Classroom Series is developed to coach students in basic AI, machine learning, and data science on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform.
Microsoft claims the curriculum will equip students with skills required for employability in a technologically-oriented job market.
“Technologies like AI are becoming enablers for every business today, making the need for creating an AI-ready ecosystem vital for India’s economic and social value creation,” said Dr. Rohini Srivathsa, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India.
Online sessions for the series are set to commence on September 21 via live demos, virtual instructor-led training, and hands-on workshops. Experts from Microsoft and NASSCOM will conduct teaching sessions.
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Students can choose from multiple time slots and pace their learning. They will have to complete an assignment once training is complete. NASSCOM and Microsoft will certify students at the end of the series. Placement support is not part of the initiative.
Students can use desktops or any mobile device to access the training, workshops, and assignments. Registered students will have access to content and developer tools in Microsoft and GitHub.
Microsoft and NASSCOM are also planning to collaborate with other academic institutions and colleges across the country to include cloud and AI topics into their curriculum.
“This is phase one of our efforts and it will be a recurring event for the next 8–10 months to ensure we reach the critical mass of students in the country,” Microsoft said.
During this ongoing pandemic, we’ve seen first-hand the urgent need to quickly analyze and interpret data on the spread of viruses around the world. Governments, global health bodies, academic research centers, and industry have come together to develop new ways that information can be collected, aggregated, and worked with. We’ve become used to seeing the results of this on the news every night when the latest infection or death rates are given for our own regions.
Technological advancement is the main reason that this pandemic hasn’t (yet) killed as many as, for example, the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak that claimed up to 50 million lives. From advancement in medical technology and standards of care to advances in communication technology that enabled outbreaks to be spotted more quickly and lockdowns imposed. Over the next year, AI will be added to the list of technological developments that are enabling us to more effectively deal with pandemics.
The growth in the amount of scientific and medical literature alone is enormous, with more than 28,000 papers published by April this year relating to Covid-19. A dedicated search engine powered by natural language processing (NLP) algorithms has already been made available, so anyone can get AI assistance when investigating this massive dataset.
Work is also ongoing to develop AI solutions to help deal with the huge backlog of other medical issues, such as cancer, where treatment has been affected as resources are diverted to fight Covid-19. Over the next year, we are likely to see the accelerated adoption of AI across many other areas of healthcare, not only related to tackling viruses.
