At Google, our goal has always been to improve the lives of as many people as possible through technology. Every time people use technology to solve a real problem—from finding an answer to any question, to screening for disease from the sound of a cough—we take another step toward what we set out to achieve. AI is making it possible to solve problems for people, economies, science and society faster than ever, but these solutions are only possible if everyone, everywhere, has access to these tools.
As leaders gather this week for the AI Impact Summit in India, we’re announcing new partnerships and programs to accelerate progress globally by building new infrastructure, expanding connectivity and access, empowering governments, advancing science, helping people learn new skills, and building useful and safe products for all.
Investment in infrastructure, science and government capacity
This work starts with a strong foundation. We recently announced a $15 billion investment to establish basic AI infrastructure in India, and we’ve built submarine cables in the Pacific, Africa and around the world. Today, we are announcing the America-India Connect initiative, which will provide new strategic fiber optic routes to increase the reach, reliability and resilience of digital connectivity between the United States, India and multiple locations across the Southern Hemisphere.
To take advantage of the opportunities this infrastructure creates, we must also invest in people and organizations working to solve critical challenges. Governments and public organizations are in a unique position to shape the trajectory of AI. While new data shows that 74% of public servants globally are already using artificial intelligence, only 18% believe their governments are using it effectively. To help bridge this gap, we’re announcing several new initiatives:
Creating opportunity and capacity to solve problems with AI skills
Equipping people and government officials with AI skills allows them to use AI tools to solve problems at their jobs or for their communities. This is an important piece to realizing AI’s potential for economic growth and innovation globally. We’ve trained over 100 million people in digital skills globally, and now we’re announcing some of our most ambitious skills programs to date:
- An AI Professional Certificate program to help people around the world learn to use AI in the workplace in collaboration with government bodies, educational institutions and employers. This includes scholarships through nonprofit organizations to expand outreach. In India, we are partnering with Wadhwani AI to bring this program to students and early career professionals.
- A landmark partnership with Karmayogi Bharat to accelerate Mission Karmayogi’s vision of building a future-ready public service. Google Cloud provides the secure and robust infrastructure for the iGOT Karmayogi platform that supports over 20 million government employees across 800+ districts. By digitizing and structuring legacy training repositories into searchable knowledge assets and gradually enabling content in 18+ Indian languages, the partnership promotes professional development and enables civil servants to learn in their preferred language.
This builds on our efforts around the world partnering with governments to equip public officials, from providing AI tools to public officials in Malaysia to an AI Skilling Blueprint in Africa.
Building useful products for everyone
We want to build artificial intelligence that is useful in people’s daily lives by breaking down barriers and making knowledge more accessible to everyone. We are making our tools more inclusive and secure through several important updates:
- Reducing language barriers: Our new speech-to-speech translation model erases language barriers by enabling real-time translated conversations in over 70 languages, including 10 Indian languages such as Bengali, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. And we help people learn new languages with AI-powered speaking and listening practice, tailored to each person’s level and ability.
- Smarter search: In the coming weeks, we’re improving the model that powers Search Live, our real-time voice and camera tool, so more people can ask questions about what they’re seeing in their own languages, including Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and more. We’re also testing ways to make it easier to get useful information from visual search, even when the images aren’t clear. Lens will detect blurry images and ask follow-up questions to improve the accuracy of the results.
- Personal learning: For students in India, we recently added new self-study features and JEE Main practice tests to the Gemini app (also coming soon to AI mode in search), changing how they can prepare for the exam with tailored help. Both Gemini and AI Mode are growing rapidly across the globe, with India among our top 3 countries for each.
- Investing in security measures to protect people online: Since launching in November, our SynthID verification feature in the Gemini app has been used over 20 million times in a variety of languages, helping people identify Google AI-generated images, video and audio. And in Circle to Search and Lens, we’re now able to identify fraudulent messages, helping millions of people avoid fraud. We’ve also released our latest Responsible AI Progress Report to share more about our bold and responsible approach to AI development and deployment.
Realizing the promise of AI requires collaboration. At Google, we’re committed to bringing the extraordinary within everyone’s reach.