Govt Announces Budget of Rs1.1b for the Projects of Artificial Intelligence

To initiate a project on artificial intelligence, the government has allocated money of Rs1.1 billion for the duration of three year. Higher Education Commission (HEC) will be taking the supervision of the project. Six public sector universities has been shortlisted by HEC already in order to set up nine labs, that can carry out research in the field of AI.

Govt of Pakistan Allocates Rs1.1b for the Projects of Artificial Intelligence

Dr Yasir Ayaz from National University of Science and Technology (NUST) also appreciated this effort of government and said that government has taken good initiative, he has also been appointed as head of this project by the HEC.

Dr Yasir also commented:

“This is an era of fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) but Pakistan is still living in the second industrial revolution (Industry 2.0) era. We were lagging far behind the rest of the world as the developed countries have started using artificial intelligence to maximise the production of industrial sector. The use of robotics in the warfare is becoming a routine matter whereas artificial intelligence is being used by the modern world for surveillance purpose

Total 19 universities from public and private sectors have applied after the announcement of HEC of this project. Six public sector universities were selected on the basis of equipment and faculty. The six universities which are selected for this project include NUST, Islamabad, Comsats Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) University, NED UET Karachi, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Peshawar, UET Lahore and University of Punjab Lahore.

NUST will work as a headquarter for this project and it will set up two laboratories i.e. Intelligent Robotics Lab and Deep Learning Lab. The CIIT University will set up Medical Imaging and Diagnostic Lab. NED UET Karachi has been granted for two labs i.e. Smart City Lab, Neuro Computation Lab. UET Lahore has got the approval of setting up Intelligent Criminology Lab and Punjab University is going to establish Agent Based Computational Modeling Lab. Each university will offer Masters and PhD programs in AI field.

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