Contemplating the worldwide growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI), companies around the world are investing in ideas related to different AI factions. As a result, we have devices capable of understanding and self-learning human speeches, cars driving autonomously and machines growing on humans fed information. Among the latest development: Facebook’s Jarvis – is a page straight out from the action sci-fi Ironman. However, before the imagination runs all over leading to Hollywood like stories of AI invasion, let’s be clear: such a day is a long way from reality…at least for the time being.
Narrowing down the AI scenario into the local perspective, standing alongside the rest of the world in the global platform still looks like a farfetched goal. Nepal’s direct participation in the AI industry is a saga that has not come up to the surface as yet. This has caused a majority of the Nepali engineers and tech companies to show little interest or travel abroad to be a part the global trend. However, an initiation started in 2012, with a handful of engineers headed by Dr. Sameer Maskey— as Parakhi Dot Com (now Fusemachines Nepal) — has opened doors for newer possibilities. Fusemachines Nepal, with AI software as its core work focus operates with over sixty engineers, including the top 1% of the Nepali engineering talent.
The engineers work in the fields of machine learning, data science, and natural language processing. Software development and engineering tasks are closely collaborated with the rest of the Fusemachines team in New York and Canada to develop AI products.
Dr. Sameer Maskey, CEO, Fusemachines Inc.
Dr. Maskey says, “There has always been a qualified labor pool that is ready to be tapped in Nepal. Nepali engineers have raw talent but lack the required training to compete with the world. Fusemachines was created to train Nepali engineers in various AI technologies. Today, the pool of engineers in Nepal trained from Fusemachines has exceeded 60 engineers.”
Further laying out the achievement his team and the company have bagged, he claims, “Fusemachines’ Nepali engineering team has built many advanced AI products that sell around the world and compete against products built in Silicon Valley.”
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To scale AI training and jump start AI interest to a wider audience of students, Dr. Sameer Maskey along with the executive team at Fusemachines has also come up with a training program. The program is geared towards providing fellowship to 25 students worth 25 lakhs. Dr. Maskey hopes to scoop out advanced AI research facilities starting with the 25 students who will be trained in complex AI factions including machine learning, big data and language processing.
The Fusemachines AI Fellowship Program targets aspiring Nepal based tech/software engineering graduates. The fellowship grantees will collaborate with Fusemachines Nepal under supervision from Fusemachines Inc at New York. The scholarship program is geared towards providing solutions focusing on AI wings like Natural Language Processing, Computer vision and Machine Learning techniques to address real-world problems.
The selected fellows will receive training on the most advanced Artificial Intelligence projects such as Self-Driving Cars, Drone Delivery, Automated Dialog systems. A total of 25 deserving Nepali engineering graduates will be granted 25 lakhs under the fellowship program. Computer science and tech students are invited to apply for the full-time fellowship.
Fusemachines Nepal (previously Parakhi Dot Com) is the pioneer in the Nepali AI based IT market. The organization looks to provide a stepping stone to IT scholars with a keen interest in revolutionizing the AI industry in Nepal. To be acquainted with more, log in to www.fusemachines.com.
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of TechLekh.)
