- The portal will provide AI-specific learning materials to help practitioners convert concepts into working modules
- IIT Kharagpur will use AWS Promotional Credits and Amazon SageMaker services to facilitate AI learning
IIT Kharagpur has collaborated with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop a resource portal to promote learning and development in the artificial intelligence (AI).
Powered by Amazon SageMaker, a cloud machine learning platform, the National Artificial Intelligence Resource Portal (NAIRP) is aimed at making the search for AI learning resources simpler and more accessible to learners, practitioners and researchers in India, an IIT Kharagpur statement said.
NAIRP is launched with initial funding from the Ministry of Human Resources Development, as part of the National Digital Library of India (NDLI) project.
The portal will enable novice machine learning practitioners to quickly search and get access to myriads of learning resources, and prototype the learned concepts into hands-on running modules, it said.
“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,” former IIT Kharagpur Director and Professor Partha Pratim Chakrabarti said.
Demand for AI professionals
Professor Sudeshna Sarkar, Head, Centre for Artificial Intelligence at IIT Kharagpur, highlighted that there is a demand for professionals skilled in AI as well as resources, adding that this need will only increase in future.
He believes that the development of this platform will help boost the AI community in India.
NAIRP will index AI resources from AWS as well as a variety of other sources such as Kaggle, GitHub and National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). It will provide search, browse, learning and computation services. Hands-on AI training will be facilitated through workbooks and the cloud.
Commenting on the collaboration, Bratin Saha, Vice-President, AWS Machine Learning and Engines, said, “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.”
IIT Kharagpur will use AWS Promotional Credits and Amazon SageMaker services to facilitate AI learning.
AWS Educate global programme
In March 2019, IIT Kharagpur adopted the AWS Educate programme to help students gain in-demand cloud computing skills, including hands-on AI experience on AWS Cloud.
The AWS Educate programme 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 programme offers a robust set of no-cost tools, resources and AWS Promotional Credits for students and educators to boost their cloud skills and experience.
Hundreds of thousands of students, over 10,000 educators and more than 1,500 institutions worldwide are members of AWS Educate programme.
