The seventh session, on ‘Demystifying Deep Learning’, was held on Friday, 28th January, 2022, and was attended by 95+ government officials, from 10+ ministries under the Digital India Dialogues Building Capacities, a webinar series for government leaders and policy practitioners. The session was addressed by senior government officials and international speakers. It provided an insight into the workings of Deep Learning (DL) to help them better understand how DL, its application, and integration can play a key role in creating frameworks, systems to help improve services offered to the citizens.
Mr. Abhishek Singh, President & CEO NeGD; CEO MyGov; MD & CEO Digital India Corporation, Ministry of Electronics and IT, Government of India, talked about successful DL use cases. He mentioned Netra.ai, an AI-based solution to treat Diabetic-Retinopathy and E-Paarvai, being used by the government of Tamil Nadu to help detect cataracts. He spoke about how Real-time Digital Authentication of Identity (RTDAI) in authenticating pensioners, and the National Language Translation Mission that are enabling India’s sectors, ranging from healthcare to e-governance. Mr Singh also brought to fore some international practices using DL, such as how the Government of Estonia is making use of a voice-based interface to facilitate the public transport system.
Mr. Omesh Tickoo, Principal Engineer and Research Manager, Intel Labs, USA, discussed how speech & image recognition, as well as Natural Language Processing, is being successfully applied in healthcare to detect tumors, to locate oil & gas-rich regions using seismic data; in the judiciary to help judges complete repetitive basic work and in urban infrastructure for improved wastewater removal.
Mr. Vahan Martirosyan, Data Science Team Lead, UNDP Armenia National SDG Innovation Lab demonstrated how UNDP & Government of Armenia have come together to enable Armenia’s development potential by deploying DL in AI for Mulberry, an algorithm created to help improve the correspondence between citizens and the government. He also quoted various other arenas where DL has been deployed to improve understanding and judiciously use data available such as with Edu2Work, a platform that provides granular data concerning the historical and real-time situation in the Armenian labor market, and Travelinsights.ai- an AI algorithm that collects, analyzes & categorizes tourist sentiments on popular travel sites, to help improve practices followed by Armenia’s tourism industry.
The participants also experienced an interactive, hands-on AI exercise through a gaming interface during the workshop.
In the coming months, the series will cover various other themes under emerging technologies, such as Blockchain & IoT, with a focus on sector-specific areas, international and domestic use cases, and best practice examples.
Since May 2021, workshops have been organized have been pivotal in empowering 2,271 government leaders and relevant stakeholders from as many as 34 ministries and departments under the Government of India. The 7 sessions conducted so far, have covered topics, Demystifying AI, AI & Education, Building Deep confidence in AI, Role of AI in GovTech, AI for Social Good and Demystifying Deep Learning.
This webinar series has been initiated by National e-Governance Division (NeGD), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India (GOI), Intel, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).