The ‘YUVAi- Youth for Unnati and Vikas with AI’ programme has recently been released by the National e-Governance Division of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of the Government of India. This programme is the innovation challenge that every young person in India has been waiting for. The initiatives’ overarching goals were to reduce the widening skills gap and improve the next generation’s level of digital preparedness.
YUVAi’s goals are to cultivate a more in-depth understanding of artificial intelligence (AI), to teach students in the eighth through twelfth grades across the country the skills necessary to use AI, and to enable these students to become human-centric AI designers and users. In addition, the curriculum provides students with an opportunity to engage in hands-on learning, allowing them to comprehend and recognise the ways in which artificial intelligence technology may be used to address significant challenges and contribute to the all-inclusive growth of the nation.
The curriculum will be broken down into three distinct stages. During the preliminary stage, a number of teachers will be chosen to search their respective schools for pupils to nominate and then provide the organising committee with information on those children. Next, in order to better grasp how the ideation process works, subject matter experts will lead students who have registered for the course through online introduction courses centred on fundamental AI ideas. Lastly, students will be encouraged to submit ideas (individually or in teams of two) by creating a video that is 120 seconds long and explains a proposed AI-enabled solution for any one of the eight core themes, which are agriculture, healthcare, education, environment and clean energy, transportation, rural development, smart cities, and law and justice. Submissions can be made individually or in teams of two.
The second leg of the competition will consist of students participating in online deep dive AI training. A face-to-face boot camp that lasts for three days will be organised in order to provide sufficient mentoring and direction from YUVAi trainers. Following the completion of the mentorship camps, the students will put the new information they have acquired to use by creating AI-enabled inventions or projects based on any of the eight central themes and submitting their final entries. In conclusion, the most cutting-edge AI-based solutions will be selected, and their creators will be invited to a national showcase event and presented with awards.
During the program’s most recent iteration (Responsible AI for Youth), participants had the chance to interact with and showcase their solutions to the Honorable Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, at the Digital India Week 2022 in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. This opportunity was made available to a select group of students through the programme. In addition, as part of the programme, twenty students from different parts of the country were given the chance to travel to Delhi and meet with the Honorable Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Railways and Communications, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, as well as the Honorable Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar. The students also presented their work to both of these individuals.
