Google CEO Sundar Pichai described the company’s $15 billion investment roadmap in the country’s AI infrastructure. The full-stack AI hub being built in Vishakhapatnam will include an AI data center in partnership with AdaniConneX. “When finished, this hub will house gigawatt-scale compute and a new international subsea cable gateway, bringing jobs and cutting-edge AI to people and businesses across India,” he said.
Pichai spoke about his 83-year old father’s reaction after sitting in an autonomous self-driving car from Alphabet subsidiary Waymo. “Of course, he said he’d be more impressed if Waymo worked on India’s busy roads,” he said, adding that he was still working on bringing Waymo to the country.
The company also intends to focus on leveraging AI to uplift underserved countries of the world. Pichai referred to the work Google was doing with farmers in India to protect their livelihoods during the monsoons. “Last summer, for the first time, the Indian government sent AI-powered forecasts to millions of farmers — possible in part because of our Neural GCM model,” he noted.
He also stated that it is vital to ensure AI is divided equitably by investing in compute infrastructure and connectivity in countries like India, as well as Thailand and Malaysia. The company on Wednesday notably announced a new undersea cable investment linking India to the US, Singapore, South Africa, and Australia.
Pichai underlined the importance of close collaboration between governments, regulators and innovators so AI can be brought to public services and improve. “We have the opportunity to improve lives at a once-in-a-generation scale. I know we have the capability to do this, and looking at the leaders here today, I believe we also have the will. Now we must do the work together,” he finished.