T.N. in the process of identifying site to build AI City: IT Minister

The Tamil Nadu government is in the process of identifying a site to establish an Artificial Intelligence (AI) City, Information Technology and AI Minister, R. Kumar, said on Thursday.

After inaugurating the tenth Digital Disruption and Transformation Summit organised by FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry), the Minister said that the site, or at least a part of it, will be located around Chennai.

Students from the country get trained in India, but many of them move to other countries for better opportunities. “The reason is the lack of proper structure. We should create an ecosystem with the best possible infrastructure and opportunities,” the Minister noted.

He added that the AI City is envisaged to include facilities to provide children with educational support from crèche to university on par with developed countries, extend sports facilities like golf and sea sports, and have facilities lucrative enough to attract people from other countries.

The AI City would include AI research centres, centres of excellence, and global capability centres. The universities may be spruced up to be an important part of the ecosystem, the Minister added. “Eight out of 32 districts are well placed. We want to make at least 16 districts reach the same level.”

Earlier, at the inaugural session, the Minister said that his department was keen on integrating AI skills into the curriculum right up from Class 1.

Atul Anand, Additional Chief Secretary, IT and Digital Services, said that the State government was awaiting clearance from the Ministry of External Affairs to take forward an agreement that it signed with the National University of Singapore for developing Large Language Models (LLMs) for Tamil computing. Tamil Virtual Academy would be the partner agency for developing Tamil language AI tools, datasets, and digital services, he added.

Earlier, at a curtain raiser session, Satya Chakravarthy, Professor, Aerospace, IIT-Madras, Aleksandr Fomin, Acting Consul General of Russian Federation in Chennai, Varun Mohan, Director, Google Deepmind, G.S.K. Velu, Chairman, FICCI Tamil Nadu State Council, Rajaram Venkataraman, Convenor and Head, FICCI TNSC Technology Panel, and Bhupesh Nagarajan, Co-chair, FICCI TNSC, spoke.