Bengaluru: Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mangaluru can be the future hubs of Artificial intelligence (AI) based on the signals emanating from the recent developments in the AI field. The Indian Artificial Intelligence (AI) landscape is set to witness a remarkable transformation as Meta, the global technology giant, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ‘India AI’, an independent business unit under Digital India Corporation (DIC), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India. This collaboration aims to foster innovation, research, and development in the field of AI and Emerging Technologies.
Meta’s commitment to an open approach for AI aligns seamlessly with India’s leadership in the digital realm. By joining forces with ‘India AI’, Meta seeks to provide businesses, startups, and researchers with access to cutting-edge AI technologies insocial and economic domains.
Nick Clegg, President of Global Affairs at Meta, emphasised the importance of close collaboration between government and industry to strengthen India’s digital leadership. The partnership between ‘India AI’ and Meta aims to cater to India’s unique needs, ensuring AI tools are built to address the country’s diverse challenges effectively.
Abhishek Singh, CEO of ‘India AI’, recognised India’s position at the forefront of adopting digital technologies. He expressed confidence that AI and Emerging Technologies would play a pivotal role in extending the advantages of technology to a broader population. The collaboration with Meta will focus on joint research and development efforts to tackle large-scale challenges, leveraging advanced AI technologies like Llama and other open-source solutions.
In addition to their research endeavours, both entities are considering the establishment of a Centre of Excellence, nurturing the AI startup ecosystem and nurturing the growth of Emerging Technologies.
One of the key aspects of this collaboration is the focus on building datasets in Indian Languages, prioritizing low-resource languages. Leveraging Meta’s AI research models like LlaMA, Massively Multilingual Speech, and No Language Left Behind, the partnership aims to enable translation and large language models, fostering social inclusion, improving government service delivery, and spurring innovation.
Furthermore, the collaboration aims to enhance accessibility to AI compute resources for researchers, startups, and organisations with limited resources. Knowledge sharing and collaboration in AI & Emerging Technologies will be facilitated through workshops, seminars, conferences, and similar platforms.
Already, Meta’s AI research models have been extensively tested by Indian academic institutions. The open approach adopted by Meta has led to the creation and expansion of open datasets for research use, such as ccMatrix and Vox Populi. Additionally, benchmarking datasets like FLORES-200 and Casual Conversations v2 Dataset have been released for academic use.
Meta’s AI research model, No Language Left Behind (NLLB-200), has been instrumental in enabling the translation of 200 different languages, including 25 Indian languages, revolutionising the way researchers evaluate potential algorithm biases. In some Indian-based languages, NLLB-200’s translations proved to be more than 70% accurate, making it a game-changer for India’s diverse linguistic landscape.
Furthermore, Meta’s Massively Multilingual Speech (MMS) project has expanded speech recognition technologies for over 1,100 languages, including around 60 Indian languages, offering valuable research use cases.
With India’s velocity of technological change and a thriving developer base, the potential for leveraging AI to strengthen digital governance and transform everyday lives is immense. By openly providing AI models, Meta aims to empower developers, businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, and researchers to experiment and innovate, ultimately driving economic and social growth in India.