The ChatGPT maker OpenAI has joined forces with IndiaAI Mission to bring OpenAI Academy India to the world. It seeks to enable students, developers, civil servants, nonprofit leaders, and small businesses throughout India with core AI knowledge and hands on skills. In the beginning, English and Hindi will be provided in the initial training, while offering regional languages to learn in the near future, be it online or in local face to face workshops.
OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon also pointed out that India is in a pole position to become an AI leader given India ranks second globally for ChatGPT user base and has the 10th highest global API usage. The two key investments essential for the realization of the country’s success he highlighted as core infrastructure and talent development. They are in line with India’s ‘FutureSkills’ strategy and IndiaAI mission priorities of democratizing access to tech and promoting public sector innovation to become a billion AI users, a billion livelihoods impacted by AI, and UN sustainable development goals.
As a supporting factor to this educational push, OpenAI announced API grants of $150, 000 to 11 Indian nonprofits under its AI for Impact Accelerator. Organizations that are working on early childhood education (over WhatsApp), maternal and reproductive health, agriculture, digital inclusion, and disability accessibility will all be the beneficiaries of these tools from OpenAI in order to solve social challenges. Rocket Learning for instance, impacts four million children across 11 states and Pinky Promise helps to support daily reproductive health for 10,000 patients with daily adherence.
Participation of the government has been strong. Speaking virtually from New Delhi, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw termed OpenAI Academy as the democratization of technology. In addition to this, the IndiaAI Mission is establishing foundational AI models, and this year it witnessed more than 500 proposals coming in, and backing a bunch of startups, such as Sarvam AI to build language specific models with Indian datasets and GPU infrastructure.
Servicing as infrastructure also includes scalable compute resources thousands of subsidized GPUs and deep integration of OpenAI content on platforms as IndiaAI’s FutureSkills and MeitY’s iGOT Karmayogi portals so as to ensure that even government officials are covered in their AI literacy.
India’s momentum is being viewed as tipping point by the experts. With a huge data pool, a growing community of developers and the backing of the Government, there is ample scope to innovate in deep tech and generative AI in the nation. Now with the launch of the OpenAI Academy, better still, this marks the first step in educational expansion, and as a way to promote public private collaboration in the development and application of responsible AI.
In other words, India is setting itself up as a serious aspirant of being a frontrunner in global AI by making a strong start up with the help of OpenAI Academy, strategic grants, domestic AI model initiatives, and infrastructural investments. With this collective ecosystem push, innovation could be accelerated, impact across the breadth of society can be brought forward and India could be made the destination for AI revolution of the rest of the century.
