Google CEO Sundar Pichai has stated that India is quite well-positioned in a way that it can influence development of AI at a global platform. The tech giant CEO told Mint at the roundtable during Google’s annual Google I/O 2024 conference. He said, “For India and other emerging countries, technology shifts are opportunities to catch up or leap ahead”.
He further added that while India was unlikely to catch up with the developed countries in terms of computing penetration, but in mobile adoption, a majority of people gained access to phones than the previous generations. He noted that many Indian users even skipped landlines and went on to directly use cellular phones in the country. He added that with each technological shift, there’s a chance to increase penetration which is also true in the case of AI.
Google’s push for AI adoption is driven by attracting developers to Gemini-driven AI ecosystem. To this, Pichai revealed that many of their developers are from India only. He stated, “India is the number one geography for a lot of our products in terms of our user base. To serve them, we’re very committed to bringing these same AI tools as globally. We see a lot of developer activity from India on top of our AI platforms already. I think this will be an exciting moment, and India will be well positioned as the shift to AI happens.”
YouTube and Google Search are some of the most popular Google products in India. YouTube has over 480 million active users from India. He said, “Our work is particularly applicable in products like Search and YouTube, and as we deploy AI, part of the reason why we’re working on products like SynthID and AI-assisted red teaming is to stay ahead of these problems.”
Since India is conducting elections, Google has promoted SynthID tool to watermark content and prevent AI manipulation. India has also witnessed several deepfake cases including that of Ranveer Singh, Amir Khan and more during the ongoing election season.
Talking about the role of AI in elections, Pichai explained, “Given the pace of the technology’s progress, we’ve all been worried about deepfakes. So far, we’re fortunate at least in this year that as a society, we’re able to still easily adjudicate what is real and what isn’t. In combination with all the work we are doing, I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll be able to do our part and handle all of it well. The stakes will get higher this year, but for now, I’m cautiously optimistic of where we are.”
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