Karnataka may rope in Anthropic to leverage AI for public good, citizen-centric services

The State government had an interaction with leadership of Anthropic India on Saturday around leveraging existing datasets for public good and strengthening citizen services through AI.

Priyank Kharge, Minister for Home, Electronics, IT & BT and Centre for e-Governance (CeG), met Irina Ghose, managing director, Anthropic India, the Indian arm of the California-based AI safety and research company that develops large language models (LLMs) and advanced AI assistants, to discuss Karnataka’s AI vision and opportunities for strategic collaboration.

The discussions explored Karnataka’s transition from e-governance to i-governance (intelligence-driven governance) by harnessing AI to build more responsive, efficient and citizen-centric systems.

“Our engagement with Anthropic is an opportunity to explore meaningful collaboration across skilling, research, start-ups and AI-led governance, while building sustainable and scalable models that can create long-term public value,” said Mr. Kharge.

Karnataka’s AI vision was focused on building advanced capabilities, strengthening the State’s innovation ecosystem and harnessing technology to improve governance and citizen services, he added.

The meeting also explored opportunities to design sustainable and scalable AI programmes for government and citizens, while strengthening collaboration between start-ups and Global Capability Centres (GCCs) through mentorship, co-creation and greater engagement with Karnataka’s existing DeepTech start-up ecosystem.

The discussions further covered topics around building advanced and future-ready AI skillsets, forging partnerships for skilling and co-creation. The two sides also deliberated on establishing Centres of Excellence and incubators to strengthen AI research, innovation and entrepreneurship in the State.

Avinash Menon Rajendran, managing director, KITS (Karnataka Innovation and Technology Society), was also present at the meeting.