Karnataka should and will lead the way in AI, says Priyank Kharge announcing Bengaluru Tech Summit

Bengaluru

The Government of Karnataka an nounced the Bengaluru Tech Summit on Friday with the theme of ‘AI and Beyond’. “AI is a buzzword and as always Karnataka will and should lead the way in AI. A special highlight of the programme will be the Fu ture Makers programme, to encourage our young entrepreneurs, our tech nocrats, our disruptors and innovators. Close to around 13,000 people par ticipated in that. This year, our focus is going to be heavily on newer innovations in the Future Makers conference,” said Kharge.

He went on to highlight other aspects of the summit like the Innoverse Foundation, a government initiative in DeepTech which will mentor suc- cessful startups, and that the Karnataka government will be focusing on DeepTech for the next 10 years, calling it the Deep Tech Decade. He also spoke about MIST, a Museum of Innovation, Startup and Technology near the NGF Factory which will be designed by noted architect Róisín Heneghan who also de signed Egypt’s Grand Museum.

He also fielded several questions from reporters, including about the water guzzling by data centres. He said that they are currently a problem without a solution and that new technology should be de veloped to use alternative means for cooling. “It’s a tough question to answer, in the sense that I don’t have a ready-made answer for that. We are the first ones to have a data centre policy and then we realized the hazards that it comes up with and that why we course-corrected and we came up with a sustainable data centre policy.

We are also locating these data centers where they have access to renewable energy and water. So it’s a necessary evil and we have to wait and watch in terms of technology,” said Kharge. Members of the tech industry were also pres ent and S. Gopalakrishnan, Chairperson, Vision Group on IT, who spoke about the regulation around AI. “What are the policies that are required to promote the ethical use of government data, private data for research and innovation. Looking at training and re-training, we have to train a large number of people.

We have to train citizens also because AI will be a part of their life going for ward,” he said, emphasizing that regulation is needed for the ethical use of AI. The summit will be tak ing place from 17 to 19 No vember and is expected to bring together more than 1,800 exhibitors, 25,000 del egates, 1,000 tech startups and over 60,000 business visitors from over 75 countries and 30 States & Union Territories of India. The three-day summit will feature a conference programme with multiple the matic tracks, including Al & DeepTech, Fintech, Health & Biotech, Spacetech and India-USA Tech Conclave, along with emerging ar eas such as Digital Infra structure & Data Centres, Circular Economy, Orange Economy and Electric Mobility.