India Can Outpace Developed Countries With AI: Google CEO Sundar Pichai
Google and Microsoft occupy front seats among several other tech giants who have their sight fixed on India for the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As the AI becomes extremely important in walking new miles for the exploring more jaw dropping technological developments, the tech companies perceive India as a key group in moulding the future of technology.
Highlighting India”s potential, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, (parent company of Google), recently said that India is “well-positioned” to influence global AI development. He said, for emerging countries like India, technology shifts are the perfect opportunity to move ahead or catch up. He made the remarks while speaking at a roundtable meeting during Google”s annual conference, Google 1/0 2024.
Talking to Mint, Pichai said while India never stood a chance to cross the developed countries with personal computing penetration, with mobile phones, it can. He said, while many did not have landline in the past generation, with the introduction of mobile, the game changed.
Speaking further about the rate of AI adoption in India, the Google CEO said India is number one in terms of using AI tools. He said Google is committed to bringing the same AI tools, seeing a lot of developing activity on the existing tools. “India will be well positioned as the shift to AI happens”, said Pichai, as quoted by media.
Addressing the deepfakes and synthetically generated content at a time when India is passing through its crucial election, and US and several other countries are also nearing to its poll dates, Pichai said Google have invested in electronic integrity as the company”s highest priority, particularly in products like Search and YouTube.
He said, “we share information where appropriate with the right governments. It made a lot of progress. Having said that, given the pace of the technological progress with deepfakes, so far, we”re still in a moment where as a society we”re able to adjudicate what is real versus not. With a combination of all the work that we are doing, for this year, I”m cautiously optimistic to be able to do our part and handle it well. The stakes get higher in the future”.
Apart from Pichai, Elizabeth Reid, vice president, and head of search; James Manyika, senior vice president, technology and society; and Koray Kavukcuoglu, chief technology officer of Google DeepMind, were also present at the event.
(With inputs from agencies)
