Mumbai: Artificial intelligence was introduced as a class 9 subject by the CBSE board of directors in 2019 – at least three years before the launch of Chatgpt – a premonitory decision which reported an increasing awareness within the university world on the potential of AI. In the years that followed, the Council has sought to further integrate AI studies into the program by expanding the scope of learning for class 11 students. Today, some of the IITs have restarted their plans to include it at the levels of first cycle and third cycle, transforming AI into a completely developed discipline for engineering students. In some cases, the change has meant to set up a dedicated faculty wing or move away from traditional disciplines to further focus on learning AI.
At the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, AI is offered as a very popular minor, which can be taken by undergraduate students in all departments.
“But whether it is as an official minor, or unofficially, it is the region in which many students want to work, whatever their discipline. Everyone uses AI,” said Sudarshan, professor president of Subrao Nilekani.
IITB offers a master’s degree in science by research in the field of data science and AI and a double degree between disciplinary which is a BTECH in an existing department and a MTECH in the field of AI and data science. “Data science can be an autonomous field, but AI basic systems are deeply rooted in computer science (CS). I feel at first cycle, it is always premature for an AI diploma outside of Core CSE; it is more logical to have AI as a specialization zone within CS,” added Professor Sudarshan.
In other institutions, including the next Campus to come from Pilani to Amravati, however, the role of AI in engineering teaching is more central while the institute moves away from some of the older rivers. For example, there will be no mechanical or civil engineering class here – just corridors designed around learning AI, cybersecurity and robotics.
At Plaksha University, the first cycle program centered on AI begins this year, built on an endowment of Rs 100 crores from the Harish and Bina Shah Foundation. The Institute provides for its courses with the help of the University of Pennsylvania, which has become this year the first Ivy League College to offer a baccalaureate program. “As such, we examine not only the impact of AI on IT, but how the AI will have an impact on all aspects of engineering and beyond. We already have researchers who use AI to develop antibiotics. We have people who use AI to do sustainability. You cannot do this only in a computer structure,” said George Pappas, Uprenn, told you.
It was Carnegie Mellon University which first made the headlines of the world newspapers with an autonomous Baccalaureate in AI. A year later in India, it was Iit Hyderabad under the former director UB Desai who first dared to create a department of AI, breaking the Convention not only in the content but in the Constitution. “We are not considering AI as a territory reserved for computer scientists,” said Professor Bs Mildy, current director of the Institute. “Our faculty comes from the mechanical, civil and material sciences. Which united the curiosity, not the classification.” Today, the Department has nearly 35 teachers – each fluent in AI, but commonly the disciplines from which they came. “Even if we have a diploma in agriculture, they are welcome, but their doctorate must be in AI.”
Since then, AI has been sown in the Iit system. Patna, Madras, Guwahati, Jodhpur, Roorkee, Ropar – They all dug under the first cycle for this. But the older guard – Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur – House House AI in the wider framework of IT at first cycle, reserving a greater learning scales in master’s and doctoral programs.
In Delhi, 2020 marked a pivot under the management of Professor V Ramgopal Rao. With an endowment of 10 million dollars of the former Yardri, the Yardi AI school was born – an academic greenhouse where civil engineers study how machines predict structural stress, biomedical engineers how algorithms diagnose atmospheric diseases and scientists how AI forecasts predict what the sky alone cannot.
“AI,” said Professor V Ramgopal Rao, former director of Iit Delhi, “is horizontal. His grammar does not belong to a single department.”
Now, as a vice -chancellor of group groups, he screenwritten another chapter – designing a campus where AI festers perfectly in the old engineering heritage, offering new age diplomas that carry traditional titles: be in computer science with AI, ML, or robotics. “During the design of a diploma, it is also necessary to think of the future career path, higher education in India or an option to choose a government job and where the traditional diploma nomenclature,” added Professor Rao.
Harish Shah, whose gift RS 100 Croores Plaksha helps to build his AI school, put it clearly. “Not that I understand the AI too much,” he said with an uptop of shoulders, “but I know it’s something big. Like electricity. Or the telegraph. Or the Internet. It is an event that changes the world.”