’s chief scientist Jeff Dean travelled to India and talked about the
AI talent
and how the country is well-positioned in this space. He also emphasised the importance of education and skill development in AI for students and software developers.
Last week, Google hosted a fireside chat between Dr Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google DeepMind and Google Research, and Dr Pramod Varma, CTO of EkStep Foundation and former chief architect aadhaar and India Stack. At the meeting, Dean expressed optimism for India's ability to capitalise on AI due to its strong foundation in engineering and computer science.
Google reiterated its “commitment to fostering bold and responsible AI” with focus on the Indian talent pool.
“Young students in India are eager to understand the shift from more traditional computer science to learned based approaches for solving all kinds of problems. You're going to see more students wanting to enter this kind of study and field of endeavour,” Dean said.
He said India’s position as a leader in responsible AI innovation will help AI's ability to democratise and level the playing field – a crucial need for ethical safeguards.
“Software developers are already paying attention to picking up these kinds of skills if they don't already have them. AI is going to make software development much more productive, and India is especially well positioned in this space,” he added.
AI in healthcare, education sectors
They both discussed the potential of AI to bridge gaps in underserved communities as well as in healthcare and education. They highlighted how AI can help personalise education and provide greater access, enabling doctors to make more informed medical decisions.
As per Varma, AI can be leveraged to address the diverse linguistic and cultural landscape of India, which can increase productivity, efficiency and address literacy gaps, while lowering costs.
“You have to bring people and AI together to drive their productivity and ability to access information and knowledge which they don't have. There’s a huge divide even today... For us I think it’s about inducing people's lives and supercharging them with AI, combining that with our diversity,” Varma added.
“Scale requires our entire ecosystem to innovate. For that, we have to make it available and accessible to them… AI tools, compute, and expertise all need to be democratised,” he said.
English (US) ·