Keen to Collaborate with India in AI: Finnish Envoy

 Kolkata: Finland is keen to collaborate with India in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). It will also participate in the World Circular Economy Forum in New Delhi next year with the Finnish Innovation Fund: Sitra. Finnish ambassador Kimmo Lähdevirta made these assertions during a visit to the city.

He said at an interactive session on ‘Innovation, Sustainability, and Bilateral Collaboration’ hosted by the Indian Chamber of Commerce, “Finland is a proud member of the AI coalition launched in France in February this year. We are keen to collaborate with India for what comes to AI and advanced technology.”

Later on the sidelines, Mr Lähdevirta elaborated, “This is an area which is in its early stage. I know there are some companies already collaborating but it is not something that I can not go into detail unfortunately. But the AI summit is an important opportunity for our companies to meet.”

He added, “Finland will be represented at a high level at the event. We will also bring representatives of the government dealing with technology issues and so on. That's something we really want to use as an opportunity to explore for cooperation. We do have very advanced companies in the AI sector.”

The Finnish envoy also informed that the future collaborations would be focused on business and research both. “Research in Finland is quite advanced. One particular example is that the University of Helsinki has been researching the ethical aspects of AI for a long time,” he pointed out.

The trade volume between India and Finland, according to Mr Lähdevirta, stands at around 3 billion euros which include import and export of goods and services. “Then we have around four billion euros of Finnish investments in India cumulatively and around one billion euros from India to Finland,” he said.