T.N. GIM 2024 | State trying to get a Quantum Computing Centre from Union government: IT Minister

TN govt. seeks to get Quantum Computing Centre sponsored by Govt. of India for Tamil Nadu at Global Investors Meet 2024.

The T.N. government is trying to get for Tamil Nadu, one of the Quantum Computing Centres, sponsored by the Government of India, Minister for Information Technology and Digital Services Palanivel Thiaga Rajan said at the concluding day of the Global Investors Meet 2024, in Chennai on Monday, January 8.

“The Government of India has sponsored two Quantum Computing Centres. One has already been allocated to the Northeast. I am in touch with the Government of India to get the other one allocated to Tamil Nadu,” Mr. Rajan said.

While replying to a query during a session on ‘Gen AI & Deep Tech: The Game Changer’, the Minister also said that as Finland was one of the countries that did particularly well in building quantum computing, “We are in discussions with them for a few months now,” to see if it could help with start-ups.

The Tamil Nadu government was in the process of coming up with some policies, including one for artificial intelligence, as the AI policy released by the State government about five to six years earlier, did not have any takers, Mr. Rajan said.

While delivering his key note address in the session, Mr. Rajan said one could change the way government functions if one could remove a lot of the human elements and the “disruption that bad human elements” can create in processes. “We should be able to make it so inclusive that even the lowest level of education with voice interaction should be able to get the resolution of the request or needs from the government,” he said.

During a chat with In-Gage Group founder and CEO Vijay Karunakaran, Zoho Corporation’s Rajendran Dandapani said that his message to any company that may not even be involved in the business of AI, but may be in the business of software or in the business of working with customers, is to collect everything. “Be very careful about protecting it sanctimoniously. You never know where the gold mine is,” he said.

Mr. Karunakaran referred to the fear about people losing their jobs due to artificial intelligence and said: “We went through the computer revolution and repositioning of jobs was what that happened and that is what is going to happen now.” He went on to cite a report that only 5% of any job can be automated. There were new roles that came into play all the time, such as data science, among others, he said.