CM YS Jagan Bats for Artificial Intelligence in School and College Curriculum

Amaravati: Highlighting the importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy stressed the need to include it in the curriculum. 

Holding a high level meeting with senior officials of the Education Department and Vice-Chancellors of Universities at the Camp Office here on Thursday, the Chief Minister told them to think of the steps needed to fill the gap between our goals and achievements in the field of education in the backdrop of the changes world is experiencing. 

“From steam engines to electricity to computers we remained followers without having a say in their creation,” he said, adding that the world is now witnessing a fourth revolution in the form of AI. 

Pointing out that the Vice-Chancellors play a key role in higher education, he said they should think of adopting a two-pronged strategy to move along with the emerging technologies. While adopting AI into the education system for improving teaching methods and learning skills, students should also be imparted with the AI creating skills and it should become a part of the curriculum, he said.

“We should be part of the fourth revolution becoming its creators and not remain just its followers. If we take the right steps at the right time, we will become part of the emerging technologies. As AI grows, one section grows as its creators and another section follows it,” he said, adding that we should become its creators.

Elaborating further, the Chief Minister said that according to the German Consulate General who has recently called on him, Germany is facing acute scarcity of skilled human resources. 

“In fact all western countries are facing demographic imbalance. In our state and in the country, 70 percent of the people are capable of working. Unless we train them with proper knowledge and skills, we can’t take the role of guiding the world,” he said, pointing out that we should think of the changes to be introduced in the educational system to achieve the task.

Listing out the suggestions in this regard, he said there is a need to introduce several verticals in a single faculty, like asset management, financial market, risk management and security analysis in B.Com like in western countries so that students will have several options to pursue. 
Classes should be conducted in such a way that augmented reality and virtual reality should be integrated with curriculum, he said, observing that teaching methods in medical education also should be changed with the introduction of AI and Robotics while changing the syllabus in tune with emerging technologies. The Use of technology in agriculture also is playing a key role and the modern methods should be imparted to our students and children, he said.

“Like in Western countries, we should also bring in practical applicability and overhaul the teaching methods, preparation of question papers and examination methods by adopting emerging technologies into our curriculum. To achieve this vision, we shall constitute a Board with world experts to make suggestions on this,” he said, adding two separate Boards should be constituted one for primary education and one for higher education so that we can overhaul the entire system from basic education to higher education.  

“To take my thoughts and suggestions to the next level, we shall constitute working groups with four or five universities giving representation to engineering, medical and other faculties,” he said.

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Education Minister B. Satyanarayana, Chief Secretary Dr KS Jawahar Reddy, Special Chief Secretaries MT Krishna Babu (Medical & Health) and Gopalakrishna Dwivedi (Agriculture), Principal Secretaries Praveen Prakash (School Education) and  J. Syamala Rao (Higher Education), IT Secretary K. Sasidhar, School Education Commissioner P. Bhaskar, Higher Education Council Chairman, K Hemachandra Reddy, I & PR Commissioner T. Vijayakumar Reddy and Vice-Chancellors of Universities attend the meeting.