The jowar on your plate, the lesson your child's teacher plans tonight and the small shop down the street may all have something in common soon: artificial intelligence. Google on Thursday announced a series of initiatives in India aimed at farmers, teachers and small business owners.
“AI is most impactful when it is built in partnership with the people who need it most,” wrote Preeti Lobana, Google's VP and Country Manager for India, and Lila Ibrahim, Chief AI Readiness Officer at Google DeepMind.
Hardier Jowar for a Warming World
As rising temperatures and erratic weather hit farms, hardy and nutritious grains like sorghum, or jowar, are becoming more important, especially for farmers working dry land.
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Google DeepMind and Google.org are working with the Hyderabad-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and international partners to build a free, open-access genetic atlas of sorghum. Using a representative sample from ICRISAT's genebank of more than 44,000 seeds from over 90 countries, the project will combine genetic analysis with machine learning to help researchers pick out the plant pairings with the most potential, cutting down on years of trial and error.
Google DeepMind is also funding a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at ICRISAT, its first in India and first outside the UK, to build similar tools for pulses like chickpea, groundnut and arhar dal.
“We aim for this collaboration to unlock the global potential of indigenous climate-resilient crops like sorghum,” said Dr. Stanford Blade, Deputy DG, Research & Innovation, ICRISAT.
A Text Message That Helps a Harvest
In Gujarat, Amnex has integrated Google's agriculture AI models into the state's Krushi Pragati platform. Over the past year, it has supported more than 900 million SMS advisories for over 600,000 farmers, sharing guidance on weather, pest and disease control, and soil and crop health.
“Agricultural decision-making has long been constrained by the lack of timely, farm-level data,” said Nirav Shah, CEO of AMNEX Infotech, adding that the platform has helped “improve farmer access to credit, crop yields, and so much more.”
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More Time for Teachers
Since May, Google has trained over 80,000 teachers to use AI tools for lesson planning and preparing learning materials. The programme is expanding to Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Sikkim, and through the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. A free online version is available in English, with six more Indian languages due later this month.
Backing the Neighbourhood Business
India has more than 90 million small businesses employing over 345 million people. Google.org is giving $15 million to The/Nudge to build AI tools that help these businesses meet regulatory requirements, reach new customers and get formal loans, while also training local talent in Tier 3 and 4 towns.
“This is one of the largest philanthropic commitments to India's MSMEs,” said Subhashree Dutta, CEO of the delta.
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