IIT Kharagpur will introduce courses in advanced disciplines like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning which, the institute thinks, will help it attract bright students and shore up its image.

On the 71st convocation of IIT Kharagpur on Tuesday, director Suman Chakraborty said the institute had already introduced BTech and MTech in AI.

“Now we will scale up our focus on AI. We are focusing on what we call human-centric AI,” Chakraborty, who assumed charge last month, told The Telegraph after the convocation.

“Our AI department, now a full-fledged academic unit, offers BTech, MTech and interdisciplinary dual degree programmes.... Our AI models are being used for disaster response and precision agriculture. Several alumni-led ventures are setting benchmarks in AI, DeepTech and social innovation,” the director said in his address at the Netaji auditorium on the campus.

The country’s oldest IIT launched BTech in AI last year, which was preceded by the launch of AI in MTech a year before.

When this newspaper asked Chakraborty how sustained focus in areas like AI can help restore some of the lost glory of the IIT, he said: “We have certain specific points. One is that now research is advancing into convergence domains. This means something traditional is converging with something which is not traditional. For instance, a lot of technologies that are there, you use them for the benefit of patient management as a whole. So, how can the patient data, patient symptoms and some other measurements that are coming from different technologies be combined to have an intelligent decision-making system.”

He said: “Where IIT Kharagpur wants to be unique is working on what we call human centric AI. Data science is usually about only crunching numbers. But it has to go beyond that.”

The Telegraph reported in March 2018, that IIT Kharagpur had set up a centre of excellence on artificial intelligence that covered education, training, research, incubation and entrepreneurship.

An IIT professor said industry refers to AI as the fourth Industrial Revolution, the first three being the advent of steam, electricity and computers.

The IIT director said on Tuesday that the centre will play a crucial role in converging research into advance domains”.

Chakraborty, who served as the dean of research initiatives at IIT Kharagpur, told this newspaper after being appointed on June 10 that he would work towards improving the academic profile of the country’s oldest IIT to attract bright students.

Asked how he intended to get bright students, Chakraborty said: “We have to improve our infrastructure. We have good labs. We need advanced labs. The campus needs to have a vibrant campus life. We have certain shortcomings that we need to overcome. The institute is in the process of a creating some amenities centres to have a vibrant campus life that would help us get bright students.”

He explained that getting top rankers from JEE Advanced does not always mean that bright students have taken admission to an institute.

“Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, studied metallurgical engineering at IIT Kharagpur. So rankings may not always suggest whether we have talent or not,” Chakraborty said.

Convocation

At Tuesday’s convocation, 3,731 students were awarded degrees. Former Isro chairman S. Somnath was the chief guest at the event.