Hyderabad, Oct 25 (IANS): The Telangana government will declare 2020 as the year of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to promote its use in various sectors such as agriculture, urban transportation and healthcare.

This was announced by Information Technology Minister K.T. Rama Rao during a meeting with NASSCOM President Debjani Ghosh here on Friday.

The minister announced that the government would organise a series of events throughout the year centred around the AI theme.

KTR, as the minister is popularly known, highlighted the various initiatives taken by the state government in the areas of emerging technologies.

"Telangana government is continuing to attract investors from marquee companies which are setting up their R&D and technology development centres in emerging technologies such as IoT, AI, machine learning, cyber security and blockchain," KTR said.

The IT minister said the state government was happy to collaborate with NASSCOM in bridging the skill gap in the emerging tech sectors.

Ghosh said that NASSCOM would be delighted to collaborate with government of Telangana in launching AI applications in various sectors and also creating an ecosystem for startups to implement these AI applications.

Ghosh informed that NASSCOM is proactively preparing a list of new job roles getting created in the emerging technology space. She said that NASSCOM would also be interested in partnering with the Telangana government on the open data initiative and also in skilling youngsters in data sciences.

Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan, Director, Emerging Technologies, Rama Devi, and Director, Digital Media, Dileep Konatham were also present in the meeting.