Conditions Ripe For India To Lead AI: Google Policy Head

Big tech major Google’s global policy head Karan Bhatia has said that “conditions are ripe” for India’s ascent to the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) space.

Speaking with news agency PTI, Bhatia said that the big tech major is “already deeply invested and engaged” in India’s vision of building indigenous foundational models.

“We think the conditions are right for India to be at the forefront of AI, and Google to be an important partner in that,” Bhatia said.

Expressing his optimism, Bhatia also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ongoing two-day visit to the US could lead to greater collaboration between India and the US on artificial intelligence.

Citing his rationale for India having its own indigeneously-built AI foundational model, he said that the country could benefit heavily from localised talent, language diversity and the “desire” to build tools that really meet local needs and demands.

“We believe that Google can be an important part of that, including not just the work on ‘Project Vaani’ that we’ve been doing with IISc (Indian Institute of Science), but also other work that we have done over many years in India around language… the extraordinary work we’ve done, for instance, on Google Translate, utilising machine learning to be able to expand the number of languages that are reflected in Google Translate and effectively in the internet, as a result,” Bhatia added. 

However, he also flagged that a fragmented global regulatory framework could potentially emerge as one of the principal risks to the AI space. Elaborating on this, Bhatia said that rules, which prescribe different requirements in different jurisdictions, could set back the AI ecosystem.

Google’s global policy chief also emphasised the need for “measuring” any potential regulations “twice” before implementation to strike a balance between risk and opportunity.

The comments from Bhatia hold significance as IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, earlier this month, announced that India would build its own foundational AI model in the next 10 months. As part of this, the Centre plans to make available 18,000 high-end GPU-based compute facilities for startups and researchers entities across the country.

Later, the IndiaAI Mission invited proposals from startups and enterprises to build an indigenously-designed and developed foundational AI model. Under the proposal, the Centre will offer equity-based funding as well as compute credits for the selected entity(s).