AI in language, education and farming can be a multiplier for India, says Nandan Nilekani

Infosys co-founder and non-executive chairman Nandan Nilekani

Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder and Chairman of Infosys, and the architect of the Aadhaar project, has listed out three essential use cases that could have a multiplier effect on India if artificial intelligence (AI) is applied to them.

In a fireside chat with Nalin Mehta, the Managing Editor of Moneycontrol, Nilekani said that language, education and agriculture are three use cases which can benefit from AI with a multiplier effect on India. Nilekani was speaking at the 69th Foundation Day of AIMA on February 21.

Nilekani pointed out that India has 22 official languages and a few hundred other languages and dialects. Citing an example of a farmer in Odisha who only speaks Odiya, or a farmer in West Bengal who only knows Bengali, Nilekani raised the moot point of enabling access to the internet for all. "We can use AI, LLMs (Large Language Models) to make it possible to have voice communication in a language of your choice with the computer. That dramatically expands access," he said.

"The very fact that we can remove language as an impediment for access itself is huge. Billion people can now communicate with the computer.” Nilekani added.

IIT Madras has built ‘AI for Bharat’, the largest database for Indian languages in the world. Nilekani said it is used by LLMs and it works similar to a DPI (Digital Public Infrastructure).

Second use case is education, said Nilekani, as he quoted the latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) to point out improvement in literacy and numeracy, though not up to his mark yet. Nilekani said AI can play a huge role here as well, and do a micro-diagnosis of the student. "Its like ECG of their learning," he said.

"If you can improve the literacy and numeracy of children, society will benefit a lot," Nilekani said.

Lastly, on agriculture, Nilekani said, "We have created Open Agri Network, which means all agri knowledge at your fingertips, with reasoning and inference capability." He also mentioned about Vistaar - an open, interoperable, and federated network - dedicated to agricultural information and advisory services to empower farmers.

"If every Indian could communicate with each other effortlessly through language, if every child can learn better with AI, and if a farmer can improve his earnings, its good enough," Nilekani said.