AI and ML in the education curriculum will help prepare youth for the future

Technology in India is playing a crucial role in its growth and development strategy. Similarly, the need for skilled tech professionals is also increasing. When we talk about technology in education, artificial intelligence and machine learning are ubiquitous. However, is the Indian education system ready to impart necessary AI and ML education? Or is it still focusing on creating software engineers and not leading tech professionals?

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 recommends adding artificial intelligence as a subject in the Indian education curriculum. Hence, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) plans to include artificial intelligence as an optional subject for classes VIII, IX and X from the next academic session.

Further, AICTE (All India Council For Technical Education) recommends all institutions offering B.Tech courses to include artificial intelligence as a specialized elective as well as include full-time courses of AI and data science.

Artificial intelligence is helping us shape our lives, whether we accept it or not. Hence, it is of utmost importance to teach students about this growing tech field as they will eventually be surrounded by it in future. Students will choose careers in AI and hence giving them the right information at an early age as part of their school curriculum is imperative.

These are some great initiatives that the government and education system of India are taking to help impart necessary AI and ML education. Nonetheless, it’s not effective as a lot of young techies in India believe that software development is the only lucrative career option in the tech space.

Subhendu Panigrahi, Co-founder of Skillenza shares that the demand for software development career options and full-stack engineers is always growing. This demand is accelerated, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, as almost every company wishes to digitize their workplace (which is the need of the hour).

Such young tech professionals just want to get hired in a multinational company as this has been the norm for years. The growth and development of new technologies like AI and ML will help them build a better career as these technologies are already aligned with the future.

If this will continue, India as a country will reach a saturation point and will never grow. To help the tech youth think of something else rather than software development is shifting their focus to data engineering.

Data engineering is a field that is growing and a lot of companies lately have been hiring data engineers. Further, we need more bootcamps in India focused on machine learning and data analysis, and not just on software development.

India has a diverse talent pool but it lacks the necessary training and development initiatives to make them skilled enough.

So far, only the Indian Institutes Of Technology (IITs) are working towards this goal and developing their own curriculum. They are also fostering research collaborations with universities across the world to give students the learning platform for skill development.

AI and machine learning are already being deployed in education in form of tools and online platforms that help develop the Indian education system as well as students’ skills. AI in the education system is helping automation of tedious tasks, helping teachers to focus on students individually and guide them effectively.

The sooner we introduce cutting-edge technologies in the education curriculum, the sooner the youth will be ready to take on the center stage with other countries of the world.