India Among Microsoft's Largest AI Investment Destinations: Brad Smith

New Delhi: India is one of the largest investment destinations for Microsoft as the company has announced plans to invest USD 50 billion by the end of this decade to expand artificial intelligence (AI) across the Global South, Microsoft Vice-Chairman and President Brad Smith said on Thursday. He said that there is a need to harness private capital, investments from tech companies, and government funding to generate demand for the use of AI in the Global South.

He emphasised the need to bring infrastructure to the Global South, and that includes data centres in computing, more connectivity and electricity. The Global South refers to nations that are either newly industrialised or developing.

"That is going to take not only the world's best technology. It's going to require an enormous amount of investment. That's why we at Microsoft announced yesterday morning that we're on pace to spend 50 billion dollars by the end of this decade to bring AI to the Global South and of all the countries in which we are investing. India, not surprisingly, is one of the largest," he said here at the AI Impact Summit.

Smith added that investments, infrastructure, skilling and addressing real-world problems are some of the key requirements to bridge the technology gaps.

"When you study the history of technology, infrastructure is not only hardware, not only wires and grids, it is skilling for people. Because the key to enabling a country's population to use a general-purpose technology at scale is to give people, the country access to the skills," he said.

Smith said that there is also a need to make AI work effectively for the Global South, and that requires some special initiatives.

"We need to make AI as effective in every language as it is in English," he said, adding, "we need to use AI in the Global South to solve the problems that matter to the global South".

He added that the use of artificial intelligence opens up a myriad of opportunities.

"We have to put AI to work in ways that will bring faster benefits to countries in most of the world," Smith said.

Further talking about the advantages of AI, he said it is the next great generator for human curiosity.

"Each of these AI Summits is a proud moment for a great nation. But we have an opportunity...We need to build bridges between these summits. We need to define clear goals. We need to have common measurement systems and every year, we need to ask the same question. Did we make 12 months of progress in the year that just preceded," he said.