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Tech Giant and founder of Sun Microsystems, Vinod Khosla on Thursday, expressed his beaming optimism about India's growing interest and role in Artificial Intelligence as the country hosts the first international AI summit in the global south.
Speaking to ANI on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit, he reiterated his proposal for affordable heathcare and even free AI-powered doctors, teachers for everyone, noting that this could soon become a reality. "It is exciting to see this much interest and these many people here. On the future of AI, we can have free doctors and free teachers for everybody at a very affordable cost," he said. Earlier, during his address at the Summit, the tech leader underscored the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in reshaping access to essential services. He highlighted that AI-driven systems have the potential to dramatically lower the cost of delivering high-quality education, healthcare and agricultural advice, particularly in India and its large population. He stated that AI must directly benefit the bottom half of India's population through transformative interventions in education, healthcare and agriculture and outlined a roadmap to deploy AI at scale within the next one to two years to deliver immediate and meaningful impact to nearly 1.5 billion people across the country. "I am going to talk about what can be done today, within a year or two, to reach 1.5 billion people in this country with really impactful, immediate benefits. Unless AI benefits the bottom half of the Indian population, we are not going to see any real impact," he said. Khosla identified three priority areas - AI-based personal tutors, 24x7 AI doctors and AI-powered agronomy assistants - to democratise access to essential services. On education, he noted that millions of children, particularly in rural India, lack adequate academic support, adding that AI tutors could help bridge gaps in areas where teachers are absent or resources are limited. "On AI tutors, there are a lot of children in India who don't get much help in their education, and in rural India, teachers often don't show up. This kind of service is very important to make available to these children," he said. On healthcare, he proposed round-the-clock AI doctors available at minimal or no cost. These systems, he said, could provide primary care, chronic disease management, and mental and physical therapy, as well as health and nutrition coaching. "None of this is available at this level, even in the US and Western countries. These AI systems would triage cases to human doctors when needed," he said, emphasising that critical and emergency cases must always be escalated to medical professionals. In agriculture, Khosla advocated for a voice-first, low-literacy, multilingual AI assistant for farmers. The tool could offer photo-based crop and pest diagnosis, weather-linked advisories using IMD and ICAR-GKMS data, crop calendar guidance, irrigation and nutrient recommendations, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices and safety escalation to human experts when necessary. "The same is possible for agronomy. A voice-first, low-literacy, mixed-language-friendly assistant; photo-based diagnosis and triage for plants, pests, and label images; weather-aware micro-advice leveraging IMD and ICAR-GKMS data; crop calendars and stage-specific recommendations; practical nutrient and irrigation guidance; Integrated Pest Management (IPM) recommendations; and safety escalation to trusted human experts," he said. "The future is here today in these massive-impact services, and they can be delivered very, very cheaply," he added. Stressing urgency, Khosla said that failing to deploy AI for the most underserved sections would amount to a missed opportunity. Khosla added, "These services impact the bottom half of the population the most, as they need them more than almost anybody else. If we don't do this, it is a massive opportunity lost for us."(ANI)
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