NEW DELHI: An Indian professor has sparked ridicule after falsely suggesting a Chinese-made robotic canine displayed at a significant AI summit in New Delhi was developed by her college.
The silver mechanical canine – a mannequin offered by Chinese startup Unitree – appeared at a sales space run by the non-public Galgotias University at this week’s AI Impact Summit.
Following on-line uproar over the professor’s declare in a televised interview on Tuesday, Galgotias stated that whereas it didn’t construct the machine, “what we are building are minds that will soon design, engineer, and manufacture such technologies”.
“You need to meet Orion,” the professor, Neha Singh, informed an Indian TV reporter because the canine carried out tips comparable to waving on the digital camera and bobbing up on its hind legs.
“This has been developed by the centres of excellence at the Galgotias University,” Singh stated, touting the establishment’s investments in synthetic intelligence know-how.
“As you can see, it can take all shapes and sizes… it’s quite naughty also,” she stated.
In a press release posted on social media platform X, the college stated: “Let us be clear – Galgotias has not built this robodog, neither have we claimed.”
The “recently acquired” Unitree robodog is a “classroom in motion” and “our students are experimenting with it, testing its limits”, it stated.
Under hearth for her feedback, Singh informed reporters on Wednesday that “things may not have been expressed clearly”.
“I did not communicate it properly,” stated Singh, a professor of communications.
Galgotias pupil Vaidik Mishra stated the controversy was uncalled for.
“We were so hopeful that this summit will give us a platform to talk about our start-up. But now it is all about us lying about the robot, which is not even true. It was just a misunderstanding,” he informed AFP.
India’s opposition Congress celebration used the incident to assault Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who’s internet hosting practically 20 world leaders and dozens extra nationwide delegations on the five-day summit.
“The Modi government has made a laughing stock of India globally, with regard to AI. In the ongoing AI summit, Chinese robots are being displayed as our own,” the celebration wrote in a put up on X.
“This is truly embarrassing for India,” it added, calling the incident “brazenly shameless”.
The TV reporter who had performed the interview, Tapas Bhattachary, urged viewers to take a broader perspective.
“If one out of hundreds of exhibitors wasn’t being upfront about their innovation, I would not give up on the entire India’s youth who are very innovative,” Bhattachary stated. – AFP