IIT Madras Pravartak Technologies Foundation, on Monday, announced the launch of a Centre for Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence (CHAI) that will harness AI to amplify human potential.

The activities of the centre will help promote the development of entrepreneurship, human resources, international collaboration and technology. Additionally, to ensure that India’s AI development is safe and responsible, the centre will help identify risks to inform future regulation.

“Human-centric AI systems seem to be the most convincing ones for the end users to adopt. Developments in CHAI will look at various aspects of deployment of AI systems, specifically from explainability and responsibility points of view,” said V. Kamakoti, director, IIT Madras.

Enhancing human potential, protecting citizens and amplifying societal values embedded in culture and heritage will comprise the scope of the centre.

For enhancing human capital, among others, applications will include education, financial services, healthcare, legal considerations, and transportation.

To protect citizens, the applications will include cyber-fraud, cybersecurity, and disinformation security. Riding on AI, CHAI will endeavour to preserve, revive and share India’s cultural diversity and heritage.

Gaurav Raina, chief scientist at CHAI, said, “The focus of this centre also aligns with the broad principles of Industry 5.0, which emphasises human-centricity and sustainability.”

“The focus will be on translational research that leads to impactful solutions in the form of data sets, AI models, tools, and AI applications in the areas aligned with the scope of the centre,” Raina added.

The critical areas for research and development of CHAI include a focus on small language models better suited to contextualised, domain-specific and smaller data sets, especially in Indian languages and more generally in non-English languages and among others, addressing issues related to biases, ethical considerations and privacy.

Collaborating with central and state government agencies, industry, startups, and academic researchers, the centre will aim to deliver solutions that enhance and amplify human potential in India.