Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, was one of the attendees at the Google for India Event yesterday and reflected on his experiences and vision for India’s digital future. In a blog post published on The Keyword, he summarised Google’s investments in India and AI, and how he sees them helping the country grow. Here are 5 incredible things we may see in India’s future:
“I’m also here to see progress being made from our $10 billion, 10-year India Digitization Fund (IDF), and share new ways we’re helping to advance India’s digital future at our Google for India event. That includes our efforts to build a single, unified AI model that will be capable of handling over 100 Indian languages across speech and text – part of our global effort to bring the world’s 1,000 most-spoken languages online, and to help people access knowledge and information in their preferred language. We’re also supporting a new, multidisciplinary center for responsible AI with IIT Madras.”
Google had unveiled its plans for Project Vaani, which is the name of the unified AI project as detailed above.
Google has invested $10 billion in India as a part of the IDF, and already, we’ve seen small businesses go digital, internet awareness programs such as Internet Saathi, and Women Will, which is a Grow With Google program designed to empower women by teaching them digital skills and offering them valuable tools to grow.
Google has also partnered with the Government of Telangana to pilot new AI-based solutions that can impact the lives of 6 million farmers in the state. Additionally, Google is also partnering with Cropin, which uses AI-based learning to empower farmers with the right tools and knowledge needed to ensure that crops thrive.
Speaking about the same, Rama Devi, Director of Emerging Technology, Telangana State, said “AI can be a powerful tool for Governments to drive transformational impact across sectors. We want to leverage AI to boost the economic contribution of agriculture while impacting lives at scale. Our collaboration with Google will play a critical role in us enabling agriculture solutions at a field level and sharing that data with the wider ecosystem so that participants across the value chain benefit.”
Google had also announced during the Google for India Event that it will be integrating the Files app with Digilocker for a more convenient user experience.