Tag: AI education

India’s Own AI Resource Platform

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IIT Kharagpur today announced that it will collaborate with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, to develop a National Artificial Intelligence Resource Portal (NAIRP) platform powered by Amazon SageMaker to promote learning and development in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for all AI learners, practitioners, and researchers in India, and to make the search for AI learning resources simpler and more accessible.

IIT Kharagpur will use AWS Promotional Credits and Amazon SageMaker services to facilitate AI learning. In March 2019, IIT Kharagpur adopted the AWS Educate program to help students gain in-demand cloud computing skills, including hands-on AI experience on AWS Cloud.

NAIRP will provide access to computing facilities to users for AI learning and experimentation. Novice machine learning practitioners will be able to quickly search and get access to myriads of learning resources, and prototype the learned concepts into hands-on running modules without being held back by the lack of resources. In addition to this, the opportunity for joint research will facilitate the participation of students and researchers in contributing to open-source educational resources and workbook development for AI-related tasks.

“The contributions from AWS will enable us to provide cloud computing to all learners and reduce the high barrier to make training in AI more available,” said Professor Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, who conceptualized the development of NAIRP.

“There is already a great demand for professionals skilled in AI as well as resources, and this need will only increase in our society. The development of this platform will help boost the AI community in India,” said Professor Sudeshna Sarkar, Head, Centre for Artificial Intelligence at IIT Kharagpur.

Bratin Saha, Vice President AWS Machine Learning & Engines said, “AWS is delighted to work with IIT Kharagpur in developing the NAIRP platform powered by Amazon SageMaker, and we are excited about the opportunity to help make machine learning skills available to every developer. With more than 200 significant machine learning capabilities launched in the last two years, AWS has the broadest and deepest set of machine learning and AI services focused on solving some of the toughest challenges facing developers. We welcome the opportunity to work with IIT Kharagpur on some of those challenges.”

NAIRP was launched with initial funding from the Ministry of Human Resources Development, as part of the National Digital Library of India (NDLI) platform. NAIRP builds upon and expands NDLI to AI by indexing a wide variety of AI-specific resources such as learning materials, courses, workbooks, datasets, codes, tools and platforms. The resources will be classified by a comprehensive AI classification ontology and metadata standard which IIT Kharagpur is developing. AI resources from AWS as well as a variety of other sources such as Kaggle, GitHub, and National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) will also be indexed.

The National Artificial Intelligence Resource Portal will provide search, browse, learning and computation services. The support for learning will be in the form of several structured learning modules with instructional materials and workbooks, as well as through indexing of available courses and materials from NPTEL and other sources. Hands-on AI training will be facilitated through workbooks and the cloud. The system will start off using AWS Cloud, and will also be connected in the future with the in-house cloud developed at IIT Kharagpur.

Amazon Cloud for IIT KGP Students

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IIT Kharagpur will adopt Amazon Web Services (AWS) Educate, a program designed to help students gain in-demand cloud computing skills, including artificial intelligence (AI) hands-on experience, and other competencies from the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud services provider.

“We are happy to introduce AWS Educate program to provide AWS Cloud Computing experience and AI-enablement for all our students, irrespective of their branch of study. We look forward to some really innovative solution ideas coming out of this”

– said Prof. P P Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur.

The AWS Educate program is Amazon’s global initiative to provide students and educators with the resources needed to accelerate cloud-related learning and to help power the workforce of tomorrow. The program offers a robust set of no-cost tools, resources, and AWS Promotional Credits for students and educators to boost their cloud skills and experience.

“AWS Educate is designed to upskill students with the latest advancements in cloud computing technology and provide them with an environment to experiment on AWS Cloud, without worrying about cost or access challenges. We are pleased to work with IIT Kharagpur in their journey of higher learning, and to help them nurture new talent for a cloud-ready workforce.”

– said Rahul Sharma, President – Public Sector, Amazon Internet Services Private Limited.

As part of AWS Educate, the students will gain access to 12 Cloud Career Pathways covering topics that are in demand by employers, such as machine learning, cybersecurity, and software development, each with over 30 hours of content. The Cloud Career Pathway framework enables students to put their cloud knowledge to use across 12 self-paced pathways aligned to labour market trends and workforce needs. These include popular pathways such as Cloud Computing 101, Cloud Support Engineer, Data Integration Specialist, and Machine Learning Scientist, among others. Each pathway includes instructional content, assessments, and a final project. Upon completion, learners are eligible to receive an AWS Educate Certificate of Completion or an AWS Educate Badge.

With AWS Educate, IIT Kharagpur students can now gain access to educational resources that can help them in their thesis and research projects, as well as course assignments.

“Learning at IIT Kharagpur has evolved beyond classrooms and laboratories. Students are now in 24×7 learning mode with peers and co-curricular projects, and this requires educational resources which can be accessed and stored at any time. Customized courses will further help the students with in-depth studies in their areas of interests, and share resource materials with their peers.”

– remarked Prof. Sudeshna Sarkar, Head, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering and Centre for Artificial Intelligence at IIT Kharagpur.

Tens of thousands of students at higher education institutions in India have already joined the AWS Educate global program. Now, IIT Kharagpur joins hundreds of thousands of students, over 10,000 educators, and more than 1,500 institutions worldwide who are members of AWS Educate. IIT Kharagpur, established in 1951 and recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India, is ranked within the top three leading public engineering colleges in India and has more than 12,000 students.