IT dept to hold Knowledge Exchange workshop on AI today

Kolkata: The state Information Technology (IT) department will be holding a one-day Knowledge Exchange workshop on Artificial InteIligence (AI) at Biswa Bangla Convention Centre in New Town on Friday.

State IT minister Bratya Basu will inaugurate the workshop which will deliberate on using AI in business, governance, industry and in transforming processes.

Senior officials of the state IT department including the department's Additional Chief Secretary IT Debashis Sen recently visited the office of PRM Fincon in Rajarhat to have knowledge of actual case developments of AI in Bengal.

The company use AI to analyse risk profile of companies and thus advise investors to invest wisely.

In addition, they use AI together with Internet of Things (IoT) to predict possible failures in heavy industrial machines so that timely corrections can be made and thus reduce idle time (upto 30 percent as they claimed, in respect of a use case in an Australian coal mine).

"They are working on video analytics and their laboratory level prototype is already able to use AI to analyse CCTV feeds to flag if vehicles were crossing lanes, or whether a two-wheeler rider is wearing a proper helmet, or a soft cap. This would be a great case to improve road safety in accordance with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's 'Safe Drive, Save Life' campaign. We have asked Prithwiraj Mukherjee, CEO of the company to explore the possibilities of developing it further and use it in curbing accidents in New Town," a senior IT department official said.

Mukherjee is also expected to speak on the coal drilling machine use case on the workshop. Besides IIT KGP, there will be speakers from ISI, PwC, Wipro, IBM and others.

Dr Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Director of IIT Kharagpur will deliver the keynote address at the workshop. It may be mentioned that IIT Kharagpur has been applying its research in AI for

solving industrial, scientific and social problems such as retail, industry 4.0 or

manufacturing.

The institute has already set the ball rolling as it is coming up with a Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence (AI) research.

This covers education, training, research, projects, incubation, and entrepreneurship in AI and related domains.

The IIT Kharagpur Centre will be funded by Capillary Technologies Limited, for an amount of Rs 5.64 crore for setting up computing infrastructure, hardware simulation platforms, software and designing the coursework.