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 real problems, from finding the answer to any question to screening for disease from the sound of a cough, we take another step toward our goals. AI allows us to solve people, economic, scientific, and social problems faster than ever before, but those solutions are only possible if everyone, everywhere has access to these tools.
As leaders gather for the AI Impact Summit in India this week, we will announce 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 products that are useful and safe for everyone.
Investing in infrastructure, science and government capacity
This work starts with a solid foundation. The company recently announced a $15 billion investment to establish foundational AI infrastructure in India and is building subsea cables in the Pacific, Africa, and around the world. Today, we are announcing the US-India Connectivity Initiative. This will provide a new strategic fiber optic route to increase the reach, reliability, and resiliency of digital connectivity between the United States, India, and multiple locations in the Southern Hemisphere.
To take advantage of the opportunities this infrastructure creates, we must also invest in the people and organizations working to solve important challenges. Government and public sector organizations are uniquely positioned to shape the trajectory of AI. New data shows that 74% of civil servants around the world are already using AI, but only 18% believe governments are using AI effectively. To fill this gap, we are announcing several new initiatives.
Create opportunities and capabilities to use AI skills to solve problems
Empowering people and public servants with AI skills will enable them to use AI tools to solve problems in their workplaces and communities. This is a key part of realizing AI’s potential for economic growth and innovation on a global scale. We’ve trained over 100 million people around the world in digital skills, and today we’re announcing some of our most ambitious skills programs to date.
- The AI Professional Certification Program works with government agencies, educational institutions, and employers to help people around the world learn how to use AI in their work. This includes scholarships from nonprofit organizations to expand coverage. In India, we have partnered with Wadhwani AI to offer this program to students and early career professionals.
- The landmark partnership with Karmayogi Bharat accelerates Mission Karmayogi’s vision of building a future-ready civil service. Google Cloud provides secure and resilient infrastructure for the iGOT Karmayogi platform, which supports more than 20 million public servants across more than 800 districts. The partnership will accelerate professional development by digitizing and structuring traditional training repositories into searchable knowledge assets and gradually enabling content in over 18 Indian languages, enabling staff to learn in their preferred language.
This builds on our work in partnership with governments around the world to equip civil servants, from providing AI tools to civil servants in Malaysia to our AI Skills Blueprint in Africa.
Build products that work for everyone
We want to build AI that helps people in their daily lives by removing barriers and making knowledge more accessible to everyone. We are making our tools more comprehensive and secure through several important updates.
- Reduce language barriers: Our new live speech-to-speech translation model removes language barriers by allowing you to translate conversations in real-time in over 70 languages, including 10 Indian languages such as Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu. We also help people learn new languages with AI-powered speaking and listening exercises tailored to their level and ability.
- Search smarter: In the coming weeks, we’ll be enhancing the model that powers Search Live, our real-time voice and camera tool, to enable more people to ask questions about what they’re seeing in their native languages, including Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and more. We’re also testing ways to make it easier to retrieve useful information from visual search, even when images aren’t clear. The lens detects blurry images and asks follow-up questions to improve the accuracy of the results.
- Personalized learning: For students in India, we recently added new self-study features and JEE Main practice tests to the Gemini app (coming soon to AI mode in search). This has changed the way students prepare for exams with customized help. Both Gemini and AI Mode are growing rapidly across the world, with India among the top three countries for each.
- Invest in safety measures to protect people online: Since its launch in November, the Gemini app’s SynthID verification feature has been used more than 20 million times in a variety of languages to help identify images, videos, and audio generated by Google AI. Circle to Search and Lens also now help identify fraudulent messages, helping millions of people avoid scams. We also released our latest Responsible AI Progress Report to share more about our bold and responsible approach to AI development and implementation.
To realize the potential of AI, we need to work together. At Google, we’re committed to bringing the extraordinary within everyone’s reach.
