#342 Andrew Thangaraj: The $5,000 IIT Degree: Can India Fix Its Broken Education System?

[00:00:00] Losing their childhood just for getting into college and then your brain is not developed properly and what do you do after college? That's a big question. After 5 years looking back, looking at all the numbers, looking at where the students are coming out, I think we've really created a low cost, highly scalable, very high quality, vigorous undergraduate degree program which I think is the need of the art at the country. He didn't have a way back. It's not easy in India to do these things. And he took this program. He did so well in it. His CG is so high, you won't believe.

[00:00:26] Then he wrote this great exam. He topped it. Now he's doing M-Tech in the A.I. and Indian Institute of Science. So his career and life have changed. I think it's very possible. I'm very good. I think we are the right people system at this point. My name is Andrew Thangaraj. As I just met earlier, I'm a faculty here in the electrical engineering department at IIT Madras. I did my bachelor's here for my day back in 98. After that, I did a PhD from Georgia Tech in Atlanta in 2003.

[00:00:54] And then I did a year of postdoc in France. And then I got back here as faculty. So 2004, I've been faculty here for nearly more than 20 years. Yeah, actually, and that's interesting because one of the things I've been talking to people about is one of the problems in the A.I.S.

[00:01:24] Yes, the IITs are okay. They lastly go okay. So maybe I think given my introduction, then I think you also asked a very relevant question about how institutes in India find faculty. Yeah. So if you look at how higher education works in India, it's a very interesting spread of things. So the IITs are few in number, about 23 today. A large number of students do not go to IITs. So every year, about two and a half crores. I'm going to say in crores, I think you should convert to millions.

[00:01:54] So now two and a half crores kids come of college going age every year. And about 87, 90 lakh actually get to college. So that's our enrollment ratio is over 27% or so today. The southern states do much better. Oh, is that right? 50 plus. Kamilnadu is 56. Kerala is close to 60. Then if you go to the northern states, they're really there.

[00:02:17] So a lot of kids don't go to college. And even among the 90 lakh that goes to, one lakh is like 100,000. And one crore is 10 million. So 90 lakh is like nine. Yeah. Kids go to college and IITs every year take only 17,000, 18,000. That's right. And even if you look at after IITs, what?

[00:02:44] So then you have the NITs, the Institutes of National Importance together. Even they don't take that many. The number only comes to 50,000. That's right. So a large number of students end up going to small institutions, which we call colleges. We call them colleges. They're not universities. They are affiliated to universities. That's how India works in higher education. The big name, well-reputed, good institutions are few in number.

[00:03:11] And secondly, because they are few in number, they are either fiercely competitive for getting admission or they are very expensive. Now, once it becomes fiercely competitive, that is also an expense. You have a lot of money to get there. So today, any education today in India is want a good, reputed college to give you an undergraduate degree. It's really, really expensive.

[00:03:37] So in our terms, you would say at least 25, 30 lakhs is what you spend. A lot of lakhs, again, you keep converting. I'm talking in rupees, again. So that's pretty high for India. So, and a lot of interesting other things are there. Even though IITs take very few undergraduate students, they are very heavily funded by the ministry. Ministry funds the IITs very heavily. So all this was okay. It was going on for quite a while. But then they reached different stages of economic growth.

[00:04:06] In the 90s, we boomed through IIT and all that. And a lot more colleges came up for engineering particularly. And then now, I think there is the second sort of stage where maybe AI and data science and ML are going to dominate. And we need many more engineers who know how to deploy these systems, understand these systems as well. So that seems to be the next stage that we are at.

[00:04:28] So maybe at this point, there is an opportunity for the IITs to deliver a program that maybe is not so expensive. And I say expensive both in terms of the competition, the intense competition that students go through. The intense competition itself, if you look at quota, for example, and even other places, Western quota in some sense, it's become very inhuman in some sense. It's really competitive. The students are losing their childhood.

[00:04:57] And then just for getting into college and then your brain is not developed properly. And what do you do after college? That's a big question mark. So we really wanted to break this childhood we have because of numbers and resources and limitations. And can we do a full-slash UG degree for under $5,000? That's like under $5,000. Can we do a good, highly reputed, good quality UG degree?

[00:05:27] The students who come out are really skillful, employable. They're going to go out and make a name for themselves. Put the IIT brand behind it. So you can do a very low-cost degree and not put a heavy brand behind it. So can you put the IIT brand behind it and still deliver a $5,000, just in 5 lakh, let's say, right, degree in India? Is that possible or not? It's a great question that came up four, five, six years ago.

[00:05:52] And a bunch of us, you know, says me that I'm talking about, a group of us sat down and thought about it and debated it. And I think today we have created something like that. And after five years, I can say that and give you more numbers as we go along. But after five years, looking back, looking at all the numbers, looking at where the students are coming out, I think we've really created a low-cost, highly scalable, very high-quality, vigorous undergraduate degree program, which I think is the need of TR at the country.

[00:06:22] Yeah. I saw some advertising, a similar program at IIT Jodhpur. Is this idea spreading now? Yeah. So Goa Hati has a program like this. Jodhpur is starting a program like this. Pakna is starting a program like this. But I think it's still early days in the sense that I think IIT Madras, because of the pioneering nature of many other things we have done in online education and all that earlier, we had a bit of an advantage.

[00:06:48] I think we know a lot of secrets and a lot of things about how this works, how this model works. And I think our model is working really well today. The other institutes are learning. And I think if they're interested, they may do. I'm really still waiting for some of the older, more famous IITs to act in this regard. So maybe if they do, and if and when they do, that would be a really huge next step. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:13] Well, ultimately, given that it's online, it's not geographically fixed, it could be a combination of the top IITs. So given our nature, like I mentioned, because of our earlier experience in online education, in our program, we have teachers from all across the country. I see. Many other IITs, the faculty from other IITs teach in this program. So they contribute in so many interesting ways. So at that point, it's become a very unique and very interesting program. Yeah.

[00:07:42] Two things struck me on my interview so far. One was that a significant number of IIT graduates are unemployed. I'm not sure why. That's what I was told last year. That is entirely true. I think, I won't say unemployed. I think, see, the way we put out a fraction of students who actually got a job and all that is a little complicated.

[00:08:11] You really understand those numbers well. But I wouldn't say a large fraction of IIT graduates are going out. Definitely not. Maybe through the regular placement on campus, there is a smaller number that's there. And I think that is a small number that still ends up looking for a job when they're able to graduate. And that is probably true. But I don't think, at least in the order, IITs, their number is that large or something like that. Yeah.

[00:08:38] And then the other thing that struck me was in the IIT mission, Mr. Singh was talking about there remains a huge gap in the number of qualified and now engineers, whatever you want to call them, and the projected need to execute the plans that they have. So, I imagine, is that in your mind as well? Yeah, definitely.

[00:09:05] But I think if you look at that point also a bit carefully, so I think the number of CS-based degree programs around computer science, the number of degree programs they have today is Skyrocket. Almost every college that I spoke about today, the engineering colleges, pretty much teach only computer science. Oh, exactly. Yeah, mechanical, civil, and all this sort of laid down onto very small numbers.

[00:09:28] So, the number of people with computer science-oriented ML or AI or CS degrees is increased. But then the difficulty in the Indian education system is we're not somehow very skill-focused from school. There is like, I think maybe it's a societal thing. I don't know. Somebody has to study this more closely. But I think generally, there is knowledge and other things of value. And people who work with their hands get things done.

[00:09:58] It's maybe a societal tendency from long ago. It's like, we don't look at that as respectfully as we would look at someone who's sitting down and thinking worse. Right? So, I think. So, our education system is geared towards knowledge and not so much towards skills, the hands-on skills. And that shows quite often. So, you'll have a lot of people graduating with B.Tech in computer science. And you'll be shocked to see that they can't get a piece of code to run on a computer.

[00:10:25] Which you would think is like the essential basic skill. They may write the code up in a piece of paper and do it. Then what good is that? Right? So, I think this is a recurring theme across all the entire Indian education. So, maybe the people in the Indian AM mission, really what they mean is, we may have a lot of graduates. But employable graduates who can be deployed into projects and can execute on the ground. That is a big issue.

[00:10:52] So, in our program, for instance, we have done something very different. In fact, I can confidently say very few degree programs in the country do that. So, we do a foundation part, which happens in the beginning, about a year or so, eight months. And once students finish that, we do a diploma part. We call it explicitly a diploma part. And it is focused completely on skills. They earn quite a few credits in that part. And it's very demanding. There are four projects that they have to execute hands-on. Build two apps.

[00:11:21] Show that they have runs. Build an ML modern. Show that they understand what it is and do that. Then one more ML-oriented. So, two ML projects, two application development projects. They have to do hands-on in demonstrate. So, we put that as part of it first. Then after that, we learn the theory in the later levels, a little bit more in detail. So, we've done a good combination of foundations and skills. I've focused a lot on skills.

[00:11:46] We want to have skill-based outcomes as essential part of this degree program. So, that is another innovation that we did, which is not talked about so much. But it's, I think, an important part. So, why this program is, I think, likely to succeed in the future. Yeah. And when did the program start? First batch of admission was in 21 JAR. And the conceptualization and all of that was late 2019. Formal approval was 2020 in the IITM Senate.

[00:12:16] So, see, you have to understand for an IIT to offer a degree, undergraduate degree, without J.E., it's like, what is a good comparison? I think I had one faculty tell me, you know, Stanford will not do community college. So, I think it was, it's like, I don't know how to describe it. I think that it is a very significant move for them to do something different and that is responding to the societal need in a positive way and all of that. There is this big ivory tower that people have built into the IITs in Tocco.

[00:12:45] So, we had to really talk to a lot of people. So, that took a lot of time and convincing everybody that, give us a shot at this point. We'll show you how to run a program mix, which doesn't have a sharp filter at the input, but it will have a funnel. And the funnel will operate. I'll show you how the funnel operates. So, we admit more people, keep it sad. As long as they spend enough time to pick up the spins, let them funnel through. Not everybody is going to make it. Sure. But let's have the, let's have the strength of the exit. Let's have a strong filter at the exit and not at the entrance.

[00:13:15] And I think today we will see that all the numbers show that. They show that this is really hard. Yeah. How long is the program? Oh, that's a tough question to answer. So, nominally four years, the number of credits as a four-year program, the entire BSDG. But we have a lot of intermediate exits. I spoke about the diploma exit in the middle. So, that's particularly important because when you keep, when you want the financially less privileged folk to come in and do a program like this, they can't put away five

[00:13:43] years of their life and then study and then go to work. It doesn't work for them. It's just a period. Even if we give up 5,000 degrees, it doesn't work. It doesn't have serious issues at home. Somebody has to feed somebody. It doesn't work at all. So, they have to start working. So, that's why the skills first is very important. So, at the end of the diploma, many of our students get internships. Small jobs, coding, maybe packing work, not so great, but still pace them somehow.

[00:14:12] And then that helps them survive and go on. So, there is a diploma exit. There's also a three-year degree exit. Then there's a four-year degree exit. Nominally four years. But what we're seeing on average, the foundation is about one year. Students are taking on average one year. The diploma, which we thought would be two years, is actually going to nearly three years. Two and a half to three years. So, students are struggling. Like I said, the Indian system is not focused on skills. We don't push the skills part too much. And the diploma tests the skills. Yeah.

[00:14:41] So, it does the exact same thing. It's just harder for people to do. So, they take longer. Projects are incredibly strong. They really funnel up those who can sit down and do stuff for their end. So, I think it's important. And then after that, once they finish the diploma, they find the degree level smooth sailing. They finish it off in a year. So, the faster students, the really bright ones, are finishing it in three and a half to four years. And the more average level seems to be four and a half. Four and a half. Right.

[00:15:11] There's no cutoffs. No, we don't cut them off. We cut them off at eight years. That's enough. So, getting up in the graduate. We had more than 1,000 graduates at the BS level already. The first few batches. And every term, we're expecting about 500. So, 300, 400, 500 types. It's increasing slowly. Yeah. And I think we will graduate about 1,000, 1,500 people in the four-year degree every year. Yeah. And the prerequisites for coming into the program. One of those.

[00:15:40] So, those also we thought about carefully. Once again, our focus was we want to reach the financially less privileged. Kids who didn't go to great schools. See, that's the thing. Even in the US, that's true. If you're in a city, go to a great school district and you see everything is on offer. If you go to an, I mean, even in Atlanta, that was true. I know from experience. Go to an urban place like Atlanta and go to a normal government public school there. Many things are not there. I mean, you're not taught. And I think you don't get AP classes. You don't get any of these things.

[00:16:10] This is true in the US and it's doubly true in India. You won't get everything you want if you don't go to a great school. So, we wanted to make sure that we can reach anyone. That's the move. The second thing is, given the importance of data for society going forward, we cannot have only engineers do data sets. We need lawyers. We need doctors. We need humanities. We need everyone doing this. So, we wanted to reach that crowd.

[00:16:32] So, we decided we will do a strong foundation and assume only math and other things at what we call the 10th standard levels like the so-so-so-mo year of school. And after that, students tend to specialize a little bit in school here in India. So, after 10th standard. So, till 10th standard, it's common everywhere. And we said we will assume only that. What we need after that for data science, we will develop as fun of our program.

[00:16:58] So, we're not relying on the fact that kids go to grade schools and all that or they study physics, chemistry or something in 12th standard. We don't rely on any of that. They can study whatever they want. We will build it here when they come in. And that's how they will. Yeah. So, right now at any one time, how many students are in our program? It's all right. No, I think there are more than 40,000 active students across various levels.

[00:17:27] But you have to understand, I think there's a funnel operating. Sure. Funnel, I'm giving you the total count. It doesn't mean like 40,000 will graduate. Yeah. And you were saying you graduate each year. What did you say? It looks like best projections, right? Now it's about 1,000 to 1,500 a year in the four-year BSL. But in the diploma level, there will be much larger. Maybe in the few thousands. In the few thousands, we'll graduate in the diploma level. But in the four-year degree level, probably 1,000 to 1,500. Yeah.

[00:17:54] I took Andrew Ng's Coursera course, and it relies heavily on TAs, on teachers' assistants, to interact with the students. How do you scale that here? So, that's an important part of our program, right? So, we have faculty at IITs are incredibly busy. In fact, IITs end up attracting very good quality faculty. So, they end up having large research groups, and they contribute a lot in so many different processes.

[00:18:23] So, they can't be handling large classes. Not at this level, not on the line or not. So, what we do, which is similar to what many U.S. universities do. So, a lot of U.S. universities have research tenure-track faculty, and then they have teaching faculty. So, we have hired people whom we call instructors. These are the full-time staff. Many of them are PhDs, masters, graduates from IITs, and other institutes, very top institutes. Maybe they didn't want to go into industry. They want to be in teaching, but they can't.

[00:18:50] Maybe they're not that great that they could get into tenure-track research positions. So, then what can they do? You know, if they want to be a good teacher. So, we found so many good people like that, and we've hired them as instructors. So, instructors actually interact with students and help translate the content in a way that students can understand. Sit down and solve problems with them. The foundation level for every course, there is eight hours of live sessions every week that these instructors do.

[00:19:17] So, students can come in, ask questions, get their doubts clarified. The numbers are large. Maybe your voice is not heard, but you can, you know, wait. You can truly eight hours. It's a long time to come in. Sure. And when you say live, do you mean online? I know. So, the recorded lectures are done by the faculty. And then the instructors do it online-wise.

[00:19:37] But for scaling the class, because as long as you can find enough instructors to have all those things, you can scale. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think there's lots of interesting dynamics here. The first thing is, students in an online program, we imagine they're isolated and they're sitting in front of the computer and all that. So, we wanted to break that down so a little. So, we do a lot of student government activities. Even though it's an online program, there are students are put into houses.

[00:20:06] There are 12 houses named after the forests of the country. And then the houses have their own internal structure, their elected leaders and all that. And then there are clubs and societies in the students' form. And these clubs and societies organize meetups in different parts. So, we actually students in the nearby areas come and meet up there. And every year, we do an on-campus event, which is called Paradox. Paradox because it's an online program. It has an on-campus event. And the students run that program.

[00:20:36] So, it's a week's program. Students have the program from all across the country coming to campus. It's the summer and students are not here. So, they come into campus. They do sports events. They do cultural events. They do technical events. And that's the place where they meet each other. And then they go back and they stay in touch. And there are student groups. All sorts of interesting student groups that get formed. And then they talk to each other. They help each other study. So, that dynamic is something that we actively seeded in some way.

[00:21:06] But we can't control every aspect of it. That's something that they have to do on their own. And that's very vibrant and alive. And I would say that's a crucial, critical part. It's not like every instruction is coming from us. And that doesn't work. Anyone who has done teaching will know that this belief that what I'm saying is going directly into their hearts and minds. It just doesn't work. They have to go outside of the class, talk to each other, interact, debate. That's when things get solidified. And that's happening.

[00:21:35] And that's happening in a very interesting way, in a student-driven way. That's also a very important piece of it. Yeah. Yeah. Georgia Tech has, I think, the first online master's. A little interesting aside. I applied and was rejected. Okay. I was shocked. I've never been rejected from anything. But I didn't have the necessary computer science background.

[00:22:03] But have you, do any of the students go on to that program or other online master's programs? Not necessarily online. Many of them even go to campuses for master's programs. So, last year, in fact, no, this year, there is an admission for the master's programs at IITs and IACs and all-pop institutes. It's through an exam called GATE. And this is a national level exam with people all across the country, right?

[00:22:30] This last year, out of the top 10 ranks, three ranks were students in school. Yeah. So, and what the first ranker, all-India rank 1, as we call him, he's actually a doctor. So, he did MBBS from AIMS, which is the top medical college in the country. After two or three years, he figured out he doesn't want to be in service. He doesn't want to do doctor stuff. So, he wanted to go back to tech. But then, he didn't have a way back. It's not easy in India to do these things. And he took this program. He did so well in it. His CG is so high, I believe.

[00:23:00] Then, he wrote this GATE exam. He topped it. Now, he's doing M-TECH in the AI and Indian Institute of Science. So, his career and life have changed. And I think something similar has happened. Those are the sort of amazingly interesting stories. The student stories of this program are just unbelievable. There's a filmmaker in Kolkata. He's actually a filmmaker. And he's a young kid only. He's a filmmaker. He did our program. He finished. He didn't get a high CG pay. But he understood enough. He made a lot of friends.

[00:23:28] Now, he runs a company which does AI production and all this stuff for movies. And he runs a company. It's sitting right here. He's doing all that. So, I can tell you stories like this about these students. And I think that's also a part of it. So, coming back to your question. Yes, many students are doing PG programs in India and abroad. Many have gone to the US, UK, Germany. All of them. Yeah, with this doctor. You said the filmmaker is very young.

[00:23:57] But do you have older students coming back? Yes. Yes. There's no age you've met. The oldest student we had for a while was 80 plus. Actually, I don't know. It was really hard to support him. But I don't think he finished it. But quite a few in the 60s. Yeah. And 30s and 40s also is quite a few. But of course, the large majority is under 30. But 15% of the people in the program are actually working in companies. So, that's a pretty large number as well. So, that's another interesting dynamic.

[00:24:28] So, these student groups I spoke about invariably has one member who's 30 years or 40 years old. And then there are others who are younger. And that person is working in a company. And that group and the dynamic it has, I think, has no equal anywhere else. Even if you go to a physical university, you're not going to find a peer group which has an older person and a younger person. And then there is, you say something and that person says, you know what, that's not how life works eventually. Things change after you have been on a call.

[00:24:57] And all these conversations are also happening. So, that is also a very interesting group. Yeah. And what about international? So, that number is not very large. I think about 350 or maybe close to 400 students are outside of India. A large group among them are Indian experts. I mean, people from India who are living in a broad area space. A small number is actually a foreign citizen outside the country.

[00:25:25] I think the U.S. is maybe around 25 or 30. I'm not sure of the number. It's not very high. It's more than a social number. And how are those people discovering you? And also international. So, 30 or so from the U.S. Do you have Chinese students? Do you have Japanese students? Do you have Thai students? I don't know. I don't know the spread. I don't think it's that spread. International is really very small. Like I said, the large majority is in the Gulf. Yeah. Gulf and Singapore is a very considerable number.

[00:25:54] We use you as a sport. Yeah. A lot of Indian folk there. And that's why we don't reach anybody else. Ordinary without publicity efforts. We don't do serious publicity as such. Definitely not international. We are not focused on that. Yeah. And in terms of growing, are you at capacity or? Oh, that's a good question. I think we get about every year. These days we get about 40 to 45,000 applications.

[00:26:21] And all of the applications, there is a small process by which people get in and then all of that. But I think those applications can grow up to 100,000 and we be okay. I don't think that's going to worry us too much to that. Beyond that, maybe we'll reach some sort of a limit. We have to wait and see. But I think we really have a team. When you see what we have here, you can see there are some people in the team you can meet. Some incredibly capable people they've managed to attract into the program. For various reasons.

[00:26:50] I think there's a social cost that pulls people in. It's okay monetarily also. We compensate them quite well. But then there is this overwhelming pull that you can make a big difference to society as a whole. That brings in a lot of fantastic people. And those people have no limits, I can tell you. They are not afraid. Many of them are women. They have no fear at all. Academics like me will be afraid of these numbers in projects of 1,000,000 and all that. And they'll stand up and say, just show us the numbers. We don't care. It seems to be that. Yeah.

[00:27:20] At the beginning, I was talking about how you came back, ultimately to teach, and that there's a dire need for India's AI advancement and diaspora, come back after the PhDs. Was there a specific reason or was it just personal preference? For me? Okay. So, see, my family, almost my entire family is in India. Nobody has gone from there.

[00:27:49] In fact, my parents didn't go to college. Me and my sister, my family, it was first to get out. So, we've become a little bit more, much more tied to India than anything else. Well, it's not necessarily the reason. But for me, coming back and teaching in India was always a good. In some undergraduate days, it was clearly there. So, you need to get an easy decision. But I think quite a few people come back. It's not that they don't come back. But it's a complex issue, right, at that time and that age to decide whether you want to be here. So, it's a complicated decision to make.

[00:28:19] And I think, who knows? I mean, today, the world is a complicated place as well. The world of politics and how people are reacting to the globalized world is also changing. Yeah. So, who knows? Maybe there may be a few more years until you want to come back. We'll see. Yeah. The other thing, just generally, India's AI mission to ultimately, according to Mr. Amishik, catch up with the U.S. and China.

[00:28:47] I heard an interesting analysis from Professor Mao Zedong at IET Delhi. He was talking about China because China's higher education system was completely destroyed in the 60s. I started going to China in 1980. And it was, I think, 79 is when they reopened the universities and the first people were going back.

[00:29:13] So, their higher education system was incredibly weak throughout the 80s and 90s. And then, the government, at a certain point, had the resources to start investing in research and attracting talent back. The Chinese nationals who had moved abroad, which is fine, but they were so far behind everybody in AI, certainly.

[00:29:42] And then, the general AI happened. Well, first neural networks, but then generated AI in quick succession, 2012, 2017. And then, theds anday language, the U.S., that they could jump on that and leapfrog that and the time that they had lost.

[00:30:09] And now, they're competitors in the United States. Do you think India has a chance for that kind of, you know, if you can build up your, well, you have the human resources. If you can invest in infrastructure and as AI is inevitably going to go through another breakthrough and you'll be at the top of the game.

[00:30:39] I think it's possible, at least from my point of view, at the undergraduate level, we are producing good people now. Definitely, the numbers are much larger. But, of course, if something like deep seek to happen, I think, I think yesterday we were having a debate in that department about this. Somebody was saying that deep seek, there was a chance that it could have happened even in India. Yeah. Right. So, I'm not sure if I've spoken to Mr. Mitesh Kahra, who's here.

[00:31:09] He was named in Times AI list, the top 100 influencers, etc. So, he runs a pretty big AI machine here in IIT Madras. There's a company called Sarvam, which is trying to build a foundation. And it's just a, it's a sequence of random things you have to tie down together to have a successful company and a product. I think we're very close. I think there's lots of work that's happening. Will it all line up and will result in that?

[00:31:38] Even the next big thing happens, we'll get there. I think it's very possible. So, let's, I'm very hopeful that. I think we have the right people system at this point. But, I think comparing India with China is a bit complicated. You said you know China very well. And I think the way money flows, the way investment flows there is very different from how money flows here. The regulations, the codes and the structure and rights we have.

[00:32:07] And all of these enter the picture. And having said all of that, I'm still hopeful. The next big breakthrough that happens, we'll have a product out there. So, you can take it. Yeah. And a lot of it depends right now on building a data center capacity. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. So, I think when those things happen, that's where the trick is, right?

[00:32:32] I mean, we put up a nuclear power station, power, couple of data centers very quickly. And very quickly is very hard in India. You try anywhere in India now, you start the discussion of having a nuclear power plant. This could be huge protests. Yeah. And it's very hard to convince people either way. This will work, that will work and all of that. So, that's one issue. I don't know how that's going to get solved. Maybe we'll solve it. Maybe we'll use solar. Maybe we'll use something else more interesting. That needs to come up.

[00:33:01] And then, who's going to invest in that data center? I think, is it going to be the Googles and the OpenAI's of the world? Or is it going to be an Indian-grown company? It's going to do that. Are we going to be able to act together in one unified way? Is there some tipping point? Let's wait and see. Yeah. Wow. Well, but you're an optimist about this India AI mission. How that's been. Yes. Reasonably optimistic about it.

[00:33:31] Let's say it is. Yeah. And where do you see more broadly? I'm not talking about undergraduate, but where do you see India's strengths in research? Just looking across the research landscape here. That's a tough question. Maybe it's unanswerable. I'll answer specifically to IIT Madras.

[00:33:54] If you look at IIT Madras, I think every department has a few researchers who are well-known globally. There is no doubt about it. They have seen some of the leading lights in the global research societies in that area. There's no doubt about it. In every department, you're fine. One, you're for sure. I think the same is probably true if you compare, let's say, the US system, the Chinese system.

[00:34:22] Just that the number and the size of the departments are much larger there. And by that same extension, they have more people who succeed at that level. And I think we are at a point where we're seeing one or two such good people in a department of, say, 30, 40. Maybe when the department sizes grow, we will grow even more.

[00:34:50] We will have a little bit more of a critical mass of such people. And I think after that, we may compete with the US and China. And maybe, I don't know, US and China are hard. At least the European countries will start competing a little bit better, I think. Yeah. You mentioned work on local foundation models. Who's doing more work? So there is a company called Subwong. Subwong, S-A-R-B-A-N. Which is trying. It's not, I don't know as they have a foundation model that's out for anybody to see.

[00:35:20] They have the ambition to do that. And let's see. Let's see how that works. So I think they work closely with the India A mission as well. The India A mission will know that. Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned also a professor here. Mitesh Kapra. Kapra. So you can check it out. He was named in the Times AI Influences list. The top 100. Although as a journalist, I'm always skeptical because they're journalists. Yeah. No, but I know him. He runs a pretty big project called A.A. Subwadat.

[00:35:50] A.I. A.A. In Musulwadat. Yeah. And it's pretty interesting. So he's trying to create data sets for Indian languages. Oh. And very interesting things. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. And globally, as I said, I spoke to IBM in Bangalore. The top tech powers, commercial companies have operations here or are hiring people. Do they give that could be a two-edged sword?

[00:36:19] Because on the one hand, they give support to academic research institutions. The other side, they're taking people away from the academic institutions. Without saying anything controversial, what's your view on that? Yeah. So it goes both ways. I think at some level, as a researcher, if you want to be in an university teaching, you have to like interacting with students.

[00:36:45] So you have to really enjoy being around students, enjoy the process of transforming them into something. That process you have to enjoy. And if you don't, then university might be a good place to do research, but you won't enjoy it to the fullest extent possible. That's right. And I know many who have applied to even IITM, our own department, and then ended up in Google research or Microsoft research. Because that's definitely more lucrative than being in academia.

[00:37:12] Even though the salaries these days are not too bad and reasonable. Not that necessarily as those guys. But I think that critical missing element is do you interact with students? Do you enjoy that interaction? Do you see that as a positive aspect to your life? If that is not there, then they just people go there. So at least I don't see them necessarily negatively. That's okay. I think it's a two-way street. Some of them quit jobs there and come here as well. That happens to seniors. Yeah.

[00:37:42] Yeah. No, that's interesting. Because in a way, India, as you said, during the IT phase became the back office for the world's operations. But will we take the lead in any new research and build a cutting edge product which is out there? So that's something that's sometimes I think of examples in other areas. I think when I think of TVs, for instance, there are Indian companies which put out cars

[00:38:11] which look at least to me as smooth as maybe being in the competitive products out there. So will we do that in this area? It's a great question. Let's see. I think people more powerful than me are working on it also. I know. Let's hope something will come together. Yeah. And in terms of the Indian AI mission or the national program to advance AI, how involved

[00:38:40] are the IITs in that? I think they're quite strongly involved. I think Mitesh, for instance, Mitesh Kapha, I keep mentioning his name. I think he's involved. Quite a few people in our data science department and others are involved. I'm not directly involved with them. I got to know both of them recently in the context of something else. And more on the AI education side, not so much on the AI development side. Yeah. Yeah. Well, another example.

[00:39:08] Speaking of AI education, are you using much AI in our program? Yeah. So that's the context in which I got to learn about all these India AI mission. So we do have some bots on our portals. We're beginning to experiment with them. A coding assistant. I think there's an interview bot which interviews students and all that. We're beginning to experiment with that. And I think that will also help us scale better with the support that students need to study remotely.

[00:39:36] I think a bot is a very effective way of doing it. We're experimenting a little bit with it. But there is some. The issue I see for large-scale deployments, when I have to deploy it for 10,000 users, 20,000 users, it's not as cheap as internet or something. It's a little bit high cost. And the second thing I see is it makes quite a few errors. I think the fraction of times it makes errors goes to the minutes, I think 10 to 15 seems

[00:40:05] to be the number these days for critical tasks. Like for instance, one task we tried. 10 to 15 percent? 10 percent, yeah. I'm sorry, yeah. Because I think some of the critical tasks we tried was we have coding assignments. So students quote, write a case in code. And we can always evaluate it with test cases. But then it'd be nice to have an AI read that code and then give some comments on know what was right, what was wrong, what could be changed, etc. And we found in our experiments, 10 to 15 percent of the times it makes mistakes. So quite often it's right.

[00:40:34] I mean, 90 percent it's right. It's pretty high. But when you want to deploy it in scale for 10,000 people, that 10 percent will hurt you. So that's the limitation. So these I think are two limitations. One is the cost. I think the energy it consumes is really high. Then the error rate, I think it has to come down below 5, I think. To my knowledge, I think below 5 percent looks like error. Yeah.

[00:40:59] Have you, do you use any of the commercial API? Yeah. So I think we don't go directly. We have companies that help us out with it. And I'm sure they are using foundation models or possibly open AI or Gemini. Anything else, foundation models, they pay close. And they do some fine tuning on that. Yeah. I interviewed Arvind Srinivas, the founder of Plexa.

[00:41:29] Is he involved at all in? He's an IITM grad, I think. I-T, which? Madras. Madras. Yeah. So he offered Plexity for free for all IITM students, including the BS data science students. Really? Yeah. So students are using Plexity for it. I use it very heavily. Yeah. Well, that's wonderful. But even Plexa, the error rate on code review is too high. Last time we checked, it was that.

[00:41:59] Maybe we should do that again. Yeah. And everything's advancing. It's advancing. So we did it about maybe two and a half years ago. So we'll try it again now. Yeah. But I think it's not zero, definitely. If it comes to around 5%, we'll be very happy. But we're doing specific tasks, you know? Yeah. So there is a coding assignment. There's a particular question. Some students have the right code for it. And we want to give CPAC on that piece of code to the student. Right? That is a very specific task.

[00:42:28] And then those kind of things, when you do it repeatedly, we are interested in getting that error rate. Yeah. Although I've been traveling, but it seems OpenAI has announced some advancement on reducing hallucinations. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

[00:42:48] This whole idea of AI for education fascinates me because in the U.S., which is what I think of, but certainly in India, there are so many students that don't have access to quality education. And if there were really a system that is reliable, certainly most students aren't going to stick with it, but multiple students will. Do you think about that?

[00:43:18] Is that something? Yeah. So I think that's something we're definitely looking at. Yeah. Looking to build some sort of a teaching assistant type bot that should be very, very useful. Yeah. I think that's something, I don't think there's a product like that. I don't know if we can, we can certainly use it, we can pay for it. I don't know if we can develop it on our own if we should do that. Yeah.

[00:43:40] Well, maybe you can just talk generally about how you see AI advancing in India and impacting Indian society. This is my first trip to India. It read a lot about India. It's watched a lot of movies and videos about India, but it's different being in a place. And it's a very complex society.

[00:44:04] And being here, after coming from a world where I'm listening to AI pundits and researchers who are always looking five to 10 years ahead, you get very excited about the future.

[00:44:22] But when you come back down to the ground and you look at society, you wonder, yeah, AI can speed up corporate processes. No doubt. But how is AI going to help all of these people struggling to make a living in this very complex society? Do you have any thoughts on that? That's a great question.

[00:44:52] It's a very sort of global question. Yeah, that's right. It's way beyond India. So I think in the Indian context, there's a lot of fear that the IT back-end jobs will go away. Yeah. And the IT back-end jobs lifted a huge section of our society out of poverty. And we may not, even if you said out of poverty, at least brought them to a much higher income bracket than was previously thought possible. I think that happened a lot.

[00:45:21] But there is that fear that those jobs will go away. But there are also people reassuring everyone that other type of back-end jobs will come in AI systems. Somebody has to maintain the AI systems that are there. It's everywhere. And we will get there. And we will educate this. Maybe we'll know that. That's one part of it. Yes, I agree. The corporate processes will become better.

[00:45:41] I think a lot of other issues in the country itself, if you look at India fundamentally, one, I'm not sure if you read about it, but the South versus North divide is pretty significant. So historically, the South was a little isolated from all the things that were happening there. And that's one part of it.

[00:46:03] And secondly, I think the early, immediately after independence, the early chief ministers that had the political, they were really visionaries and they invested a lot in spreading education. Transports level education started a lot of schools, came up with a scheme by which people got suits for free, schools, etc. Why am I saying? The situation in the South is generally dramatically different. You can take any number.

[00:46:31] You can look at maternal mortality ratio, infant mortality ratio. You can look at cross-envolentation. Any significant statistic, the southern states, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra, Maharashtra, and Kodi Kusubo states, way better than many of the northern states. So the key northern states are a little bit behind. So significantly behind many of these numbers. Why am I saying that? So now some of these systems have to get replicated elsewhere. It's education.

[00:47:01] You can take education. And you need a very good working school system. And people have to believe in that system. They should believe that when you go to school, you get good education. Then you go to college, you have to actually learn and then do something there. And then your life becomes better. So that kind of belief in that system has to come. And that is, in my opinion, not there in many states in the country. In large numbers.

[00:47:29] There is pockets where it's there, but it's not spread out. And that's where you see the big difference. Not like the south is like advanced significantly beyond the wealthiest states. But still, it is noticeably better. I'm not sure if it's a moment you've traveled, but you'll see that it's noticeably better. So, I think the advancements of many of the states can get short-circuited.

[00:47:52] If we deploy AI wisely, correctly, and if AI actually advances in making that better. Like, for instance, a lot of work that we're doing in doing AI for Indian languages. Yeah. Doing AI in Indian languages. How to convert. How can some farmer living in some small village ask a question and get answers from AI? All of these kind of things is very interesting.

[00:48:18] So, if those things get deployed really in an intelligent way, then kids get educated better. Farmers do their jobs better. They can grow things better. And more importantly, I think the justice system, the courts in India famously clog all sorts of crazy reasons. If the justice system gets better because of AI, then I think fundamental societal change can happen. Or many things.

[00:48:46] So, that's a dream as such. It will happen on our daily basis. Okay.