Robot dog claim at AI summit triggers storm
Organisers of the India AI Impact Summit on Wednesday asked Galgotias University to vacated its stall at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi after a controversy broke out over the display of a Chinese-made robot dog that was presented as an in-house innovation.
"We do not want such exhibits to continue," said IT Secretary S Krishnan. He emphasised that the Government would not tolerate exhibits misrepresented as original creations.
Abhishek Singh, Additional Secretary in Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, said the intention is not to stifle innovation but it should not be misleading. The controversy "should not overshadow the kind of effort that the others have put in," he said.
The row began after a video clip from the summit went viral. In the clip, Professor Neha Singh of Galgotias University is seen introducing a robotic dog and claiming that was developed by the university's centre of excellence.
Soon after the video surfaced, several social media users claimed that the robotic dog was not developed by the university but was in fact a commercial model manufactured by a Chinese robotics firm, which is widely used in research and educational institutions around the world.
As the controversy grew, visuals on Wednesday showed staff and students from Galgotias University vacating their stall at the summit venue in New Delhi. Video footage from the venue indicated that power supply to the stall cut off.The university issued a public apology for the "confusion" caused at the summit, later in the day. The university claimed one of its representatives at the pavilion was "ill-informed". "She was not aware of the technical origins of the product and, in her enthusiasm for being on camera, gave factually incorrect information even though she was not authorised to speak to the press. There was no institutional intent to misrepresent the innovation," the spokesperson said.
