Kolkata, Aug 31 (IANS): In a bid to promote learning and development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur announced a collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop a National Artificial Intelligence Resource Portal (NAIRP) platform, an official said.

"There is already a great demand for professionals skilled in AI as well as resources, and this need will only increase in our society. The development of this platform will help boost the AI community in India," Sudeshna Sarkar, Head of Centre for Artificial Intelligence at IIT Kharagpur, said.

NAIRP was launched with initial funding from the Ministry of Human Resources Development, as part of the National Digital Library of India (NDLI) platform. It builds upon and expands NDLI to AI by indexing a wide variety of AI-specific resources such as learning materials, courses, workbooks, datasets, codes, tools and platforms.The upcoming portal will provide search, browse, learning and computation services.

Hands-on AI training will be facilitated to all AI learners, practitioners, and researchers in India through workbooks and the cloud. The system will start off using AWS Cloud, and will also be connected in the future with the in-house cloud developed at IIT Kharagpur.

"With more than 200 significant machine learning capabilities launched in the last two years, AWS has the broadest and deepest set of machine learning and AI services focused on solving some of the toughest challenges facing developers. We welcome the opportunity to work with IIT Kharagpur on some of those challenges," Bratin Saha,Vice President AWS Machine Learning & Engines, said.