CBSE students will now learn AI skills from Class VIII in a course created by Intel

• The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is all set to roll out AI curriculum from 8th grade onwards.
  
• The country's first AI Skills Lab in collaboration with Intel’s AI for Youth initiative will be introduced in 22,000 schools .
  
• The schools will soon have a ‘National AI Olympiad’ to bring more students into the ambit of digital skills exercise.

Indian schools have finally woken up to the need for digital education at a young age. Soon, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is all set to roll out AI curriculum from Class 8 onwards.

An AI Skills Lab in collaboration with American multinational Intel’s AI for Youth initiative, will be rolled out across 22,000 schools in India. The board has taken a number of initiatives to integrate AI in the school curriculum so far.

“CBSE is the only board that has introduced AI as a full-fledged subject in school curriculum. Further, a new practice of ‘AI Integrated Pedagogy’ created by us will help the teachers to engage youth in an innovative way,” said Biswajit Saha, Director of Skill Education & Training at CBSE.

The board will formulate an AI manual which will include FAQs explaining the integration of AI at the school level.

“This is a meaningful step towards enabling our youth to become digitally-empowered and effectively utilize emerging technologies such as AI to solve pressing local and global challenges,” said Shweta Khurana, director of programs and partnerships at Intel India.

The course will teach core AI skills including ethics and privacy basics, with a problem-solving and creative mindset. Students can now opt for AI model training and inferencing in Class 9.

“Artificial intelligence has become a strategic imperative for worldwide economic growth and will continue to be one of the most crucial technologies of the future. Given its impact, there is a need for coordinated efforts by academic institutions and the industry to address the gap between the demand and supply of AI-related skills,” said Khurana.

The initiative started with eight schools last year, aims to skill over 100,000 students by the end of this year. In addition, the schools will also host a ‘National AI Olympiad.’

Last year, CBSE also partnered with Microsoft and IBM to reskill its teachers in digital technologies. The collaboration was to integrate cloud-powered technology in teaching and developing digital teaching skills in staff across schools.

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