NITI Aayog committed to AI
Perlin is sponsoring the Artificial Intelligence (AI) for All Global Hackathon working closely with the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) and then with PT Telkom to scale it in Indonesia.
Initially focused on communities in India, the hackathon partners will support the winning applications to be also scaled for implementation in Indonesia and globally.
Working with teams in both countries, developers around the world will have a rare opportunity to submit ideas for how innovation in AI can be leveraged to make a lasting and meaningful positive impact on those vast populations.
Both global economic powerhouses, India and Indonesia are the world’s largest developing democracies with a total combined population of around 1.6 billion people, or about 20% of all humans on the planet.
“The AI for All Hackathon underscores the commitment of NITI Aayog to supporting meaningful social, economic and technological advancements directed at making people’s lives better,” said Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog.
“We believe India is ideally positioned as a thought-leader and regional economic power to help bring the benefits of innovation in AI and distributed computing to communities in developing countries around the world,” he stressed.
Perlin will manage the Hackathon and provide access to its decentralized cloud compute platform to support AI teams.
Perlin’s cloud network is based on world-leading distributed computing technology that utilizes the vast amounts of idle computational power currently sitting unused on computers, phones, and other smart devices.
By allowing device owners to rent out their idle compute power, Perlin will also help foster greater economic inclusion for people in impoverished communities around the world by allowing them to access an entirely new source of passive income.
“The Perlin team is incredibly excited to work closely with teams in India and Indonesia, as the world’s two most populous and influential developing democracies, said explained Dorjee Sun, CEO of Perlin.
“As a source of significantly cheaper, secure, reliable and socially conscious cloud compute power, we want our decentralized platform to support the work of the world’s best and brightest AI developers. And by effectively redistributing the huge revenues from a cloud market estimated to be worth US$300 billion by 2021, we will also empower struggling communities globally,” Sun explained.
In addition to appointees from Perlin and NITI Aayog, internationally recognised pioneers in the AI sector and tech industry leaders have already been appointed to the prestigious panel of judges.
The appointees include:
Amitabh Kant – CEO of NITI Aayog, author of ‘Branding India – An Incredible Story’ and multi-award winning thought leader;
Michael Witbrock – Head at AI Foundations Lab IBM (Reasoning at IBM Research AI) & Co-founder of the AI for Good Foundation;
Anandamoy Roychowdhary – Director of Technology at Sequoia Capital;
Prahbakar Reddy – Partner at Accel Partners & serial entrepreneur;
Anup Malani – Professor of Law and Economics at University of Chicago, Co-founder & Faculty Director International Innovation Corps;
Ery Punta Hendraswara – Deputy EGM Coherence & Innovation Management at Telkom;
Dorjee Sun – CEO of Perlin & serial social entrepreneur.
“Artificial Intelligence is changing how we live, work and interact in every conceivable sphere of life,” said Anna Roy, Advisor NITI Aayog.
“By focusing on innovation in novel techniques in distributed and privacy preserving computation we hope to increase awareness and enable innovators to design proof of concepts which can effectively address some concerns within the ethics and privacy dimensions of artificial intelligence use.
“We are happy to partner with leading innovators in distributed computing – such as Perlin and our distinguished panel of judges for this hackathon – to position India as a true global leader in this space,” said Roy.
Run in two stages, the first stage will invite ideas for any AI use case entrants believe can benefit Indian communities.
The second stage will call for those ideas to be developed, with a focus on privacy preserving AI and distributed computing.
Winners will share in a prize pool worth US$50,000 in both cash and non-cash rewards.
More importantly, participants will also get valuable exposure to the world-class judging panel and major sponsors, with winners invited to officially partner with Perlin, NITI Aayog, Telkom and other hackathon sponsors to scale and implement their AI applications.
And most importantly, winning teams will be supported to make a lasting and meaningful positive impact in the lives of up to 1.6 billion people.
The “AI 4 All Hackathon” was announced at the AI conference organized by NITI Aayog in partnership with the Observer Research Foundation, held in Mumbai from 15-16 November 2018. fiinews.com
