He said he flew down to India “to see progress being made from our $10 billion, 10-year India Digitization Fund (IDF).” The top executive of the company said he will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss how AI can be applied in sectors like agriculture and healthcare.
Here’s what he said in a blog post:
It’s always special to come back to India, and this trip is especially meaningful as it’s my first visit back since the pandemic. As we come out of it, there’s a sense of optimism about the country’s future and the role technology can play to improve lives.
Which brings me to why I’m here: first and foremost to meet with Googlers, as the team has grown significantly since I was last here. 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. (Our VP of India Sanjay Gupta shares more details in his blog post below.)
This progress is part of how we’re working to seize the opportunity in AI globally, balancing the need to be bold with innovation and responsible in our approach. I’m excited to see the ways India will contribute to breakthroughs in AI that could benefit over a billion people in India, and more around the world.
More broadly, I’ve been amazed at the ways people are already using technology to make their communities better. One of the local tech founders I met today has broken new ground by offering a radiation-free and non-invasive breast cancer screening tool; another developed a chatbot that helps people manage stress. I was glad to hear their stories and to share thoughts on how technology can expand opportunity during a conversation at WomenWill.
Later today, I have the honor of meeting with His Excellency Prime Minister Modi to discuss how we are supporting small businesses and start-ups, investing in cybersecurity, providing education and skills training, applying AI in sectors like agriculture and healthcare, and other priorities. Prime Minister Modi’s Digital India vision has helped to accelerate the progress we’re seeing across India, and I’m excited for India to share its experience with the world as it takes over the G20 presidency in 2023.
The pace of technological change in India has been extraordinary, and there’s so much opportunity still ahead. Glad to be able to see it up close, and I’m already looking forward to my next visit.
Sundar
Regulatory framework for innovation
Pichai also said that it is important for the government to create regulatory frameworks that help companies innovate. He was talking about the personal data protection (PDP) bill which is aimed to go live next year.
“India has a leadership role to play here. It’s important to make sure you’re balancing the safeguards you’re putting for people and creating innovative frameworks so that companies can innovate on top of certainty in the legal framework,” Pichai said.
It is to be noted that the government is working on multiple bills in order to safeguard users’ data and create a robust legal regulatory framework around the new internet economy.
“I think it’s important for countries to think about how to best safeguard their citizens. We are engaging constructively. It is easy to build something which scales across the entire country and this is the opportunity that India has. There’s no better time to do a startup, even though we are working through a macro-economic situation right now,” the Google CEO added.
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