1M1B (1 Million for 1 Billion), an Indian-based organisation focussed on social innovations and future skills, announced India’s First Artificial Intelligence (AI) Youth Lab in New Delhi on Tuesday, January 21.
The AI Youth Lab is an initiative by 1M1B in collaboration with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the year 2030. 1M1B works with youth in urban as well as rural schools to achieve and fulfil the UN SDGs. 1M1B is working closely with UN Economic and Social Council (UN-ECOSOC) and the United Nations Department of Global Communications for several years.
The organisation, because of its association with the various UN bodies, has also been able to take the students it works with to UN headquarters in New York to attend, as well as address, international intra-governmental sessions.
Manav Subodh, the co-founder of 1M1B, who is currently out in the countryside, working with the program’s rural schools, says, “We’ve been working with youth around the country for the last four years, and while previously we encouraged our student participants to work on projects which can positively impact the lives of at least 10 people (no small thing in itself), we realised that by using Artificial Intelligence, we could scale up that impact by multiple factors.”
Subodh intends to set up over 50 labs in schools across India and abroad over the course of 2020, saying, “We provide the infrastructure, training, and all other facilities for our partner schools, so that it doesn’t cost them anything. This is especially an important factor for rural schools. In fact, we’re also organising mobile AI labs, which can travel between hard-to-reach villages, so as to have maximum reach.”
While it all may sound tech-heavy, Subodh says that AI can be used to facilitate projects across disciplines, from humanities to engineering and social as well as hard sciences.
“We’re working with students across the spectrum. If we’re teaching one student interested in conservation how to use AI to compile and extrapolate data affecting different species, another class 11 student wanting to become a molecular biologist is learning how AI can aid in discovering new medical drugs.”
Highlights of the initiative
The AI Youth Lab is an initiative by 1M1B in collaboration with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the year 2030. 1M1B works with youth in urban as well as rural schools to fulfil the UN SDGs. 1M1B is working closely with UN-ECOSOC and the United Nations Department of Global Communications.