The universities and HEIs are required to upgrade and ramp up the scale of AI courses for students from technical and non-technical backgrounds, To facilitate large-scale skilling in Artificial Intelligence (AI), enable the remapping of AI courses, and create a new skilling landscape, the UGC has directed the Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) to widely disseminate the ‘National Programme on Artificial Intelligence (NPAI) Skilling Framework’ report. The universities and HEIs are required to upgrade and ramp up the scale of AI courses for students from technical and non-technical backgrounds.
Based on the current industry demand, the report attempts to draw a skilling landscape for AI, outlining the basic categories. The HEIs will have to focus on ‘skilling capsules for staying updated on changes because of AI; usage of tools such as generative AI tools for productivity enhancement; reskilling to use AI as job/learning enhancer together with ‘AI product’ sales and implementation managers and leaders; usage of AI to improve human interactions and decision-making process; using AI for social good to solve complex problems and providing citizen services, and AI data privacy, legal and ethics experts with knowledge of ‘Responsible & Explainable AI’.
Talking about the need for upscaling of AI courses, Manish Ratnakar Joshi, secretary, UGC, says “It is important for students from varied academic streams to be skilled in AI as mass applicability of any technology allows more people to creatively use it for problem-solving. Today, people are using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT; which necessitates the incorporation of Large Language Model (LLM) in AI courses”.
AI and Data Mining are being taught in various universities in India and the technology is fast changing, hence it is imperative to remap these courses with new parameters to NSQF framework, adds Joshi. Remapping courses and creating a new skilling landscape are needed for upscaling the curriculum to meet the growing need for AI professionals, adds Joshi. "The type of skills mentioned in the report must be integrated into existing courses, which will eventually be developed as the parameters suggested in the report. For example, AI courses have been taught since the 1960s but they did not have ChatGPT and LLM, which are recent developments. Hence, the report suggests updating of courses to include the latest technology and remapping of them to NSQF," adds Joshi.
According to the State of Data Science & AI Skills In India ‘Data and The Art of Smart Intelligence’ NASSCOM report India has an installed talent base of 4,20,000 professionals (as of August 2022) and a current demand for approximately 6,30,000. The current gap between demand and supply is approximately 51%. By 2024, the estimated demand for AI/Data Science professionals in India is expected to be over 1 million.
Educationists see MEITY and the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship's NPAI as a welcome development that will lead to upscaling of AI-based technical and non-technical courses. “Skilled AI trainers are rare, as they are in demand in academic institutes and industries. The demand for AI/ML engineers is on the rise and it will increase further quickly. Governments, both at the state and central levels can be a catalyst in furthering the agenda clearly articulated by the national programme, create task forces and bring the stakeholders together”, says Dinesh Babu Jayagopi, associate professor, IIIT-Bangalore.
Educational institutions are incorporating AI to offer personalised education to support the slow performers and advanced learners in the classrooms. “AI is getting smarter every day and is gradually spinning a tight web around us, with its strengthening adaptive and generative AI like ChatGPT and Bard. It is, therefore, imperative for businesses to upgrade their operations to capture the data using IoT and use this data intelligently to bring in business efficiencies. This is leading to new business models, products and technologies, translating into new job opportunities, and to feed this need, we will require AI-enabled manpower”, says Jaskiran Arora, dean, Education Quality, BML Munjal University.
In a letter to HEIs, the UGC said that the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeiTY) has undertaken the implementation of the National Program on Artificial Intelligence (NPAI). A Committee on Creating Skilling Framework for AI was constituted earlier to assess and analyse the status of the existing National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF)-aligned and approved Al-related qualifications, devise strategies with timelines to upscale the Al-based skill courses and develop a broad structure of courses on AI and Data Sciences. The committee prepared a report titled ‘National Programme on Artificial Intelligence (NPAI) Skilling Framework’ that provides an overview of the current status of AI technologies across sectors and aims to align skilling initiatives with NSQF framework.
