The Ugail Foundation by Hassan Ugail, the visual computing Professor at the University of Bradford, commenced work on five projects in collaboration with Maldives Open Source Society (MOSS) as part of the Research and Development Artificial Intelligence (AI) Accelerator program
The program launched at Maldives National University's Faculty of Education, on Saturday. The Indian Ambassador to the Maldives Akhilesh Mishra was Chief Guest at this ceremony.
The program includes identifying problems and issues, learning basic concepts of AI and its application to come up with feasible prototypes with aims of further development into commercially viable products and solutions
At the event, five projects were selected after participants were given the opportunity to formulate ideas for the program.
Heading the initiative, Professor Ugail stated that he hopes to see the five projects progress towards the prototype stage within the next six months and become businesses in the future and highly relevant to the Maldivian context.
Moreover, he noted that the Accelerator Program was a successful initiative and that the shortlisted projects were of great quality.
An idea to collect and consolidate data from government institutions and a bot that communicates in the local language 'Dhivehi' were among the projects selected.
"In truth, we are more talented compared to other countries.", adding that Maldives struggles to make progress due to a lack of resources and fewer people to guide and provide a path of example.
The five teams will receive a monthly stipend of MVR 20,000 to develop their projects. At the end of the six-months, the teams are expected to showcase their projects through a public demonstration.