The Tamil Nadu government will set up a Centre of Excellence with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) lab and will offer this to startups and other small players with a minimal operation fee, said Kumar Jayanth, Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Information Technology and Digital Services, Government of Tamil Nadu.

Delivering his keynote address after inaugurating The Hindu AI Summit 2024, Mr. Jayant highlighted that the State recently announced its AI mission, and said that he would speak to the ICT Academy and explore how AI could be built into academics. ICT Academy is a not-for-profit, Government of India initiative that aims at training higher education teachers and students.

Speaking about the impact of AI on specific sectors, Mr. Jayant said: “One sector that has totally transformed is how we consume information. If you search for anything on Google, it gives an AI overview.”

He, however, added: “One of the biggest issues is bias, like algorithm-based bias and basic cognitive bias.”

Santhosh T.G., secretary of the CIO Association, said that though AI has been around for several decades, it has now emerged in a new avatar. We need to understand its capabilities and explore its full potential, he said.

Suresh Raman, convenor, CII TN ICT Panel & vice president and regional head, Tata Consultancy Services, said Tamil Nadu has always been ahead of the curve and has come out with policies pertaining to AI. Pointing out the challenges ahead, he said: “The real challenges lie in end-to-end infrastructure for IT for AI to freely scale. When I say infrastructure, I’m talking about infrastructure for AI training itself, and it is not as easy as it appears. The cost of AI hardware is going to be so high. Eventually, the hardware cost will come down.”

L.V. Navaneeth, CEO of The Hindu Group, said that AI is no longer a thing of the distant future; it is here and is shaping the way we live, work, and innovate. “While some important voices have argued that the impact of AI on humanity is likely to be as fundamental as fire, others have cautioned that, without the right guardrails, it could turn out to be an uncontrollable, raging wildfire,” he added.

A robot warmly greeted the guests upon arrival, offering a unique and innovative welcome experience at the event.

The event is presented by the SRM Institute of Science & Technology (SRMIST) and powered by Sify, in association with ManageEngine. The Confederation of Indian Industry is the industry partner and CIO Association is the strategic partner.

RetailGPT is the phygital commerce partner for the summit, Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project the healthcare partner, and LatentView Analytics the data analytics partner. Tamil Nadu Technology Hub (iTNT) has been roped in as the digital transformation partner, while Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation has come in as the skilling partner. Chennai Metro Rail is the mobility partner, and the TV partner is Puthiya Thalaimurai.