Voice AI is the final frontier in a country like India: Nandan Nilekani

Voice AI, technology enabling machines to understand, process and generate human speech, is the final frontier in a country like India, where it can have a massive impact on population, said Nandan Nilekani, Co-Founder non- Executive Chairman of Infosys here on Wednesday.

He was speaking in a fireside chat with Vishal Dhupar, MD, South Asia, NVIDIA at an event themed around Voice AI-Making the best work of India, which also showcased the country’s best Indic language voice AI deployments.

Tracing the country’s AI journey so far, he said, the country started supporting multiple languages, through translation, some five years ago. “Now, it’s about voice, which is a whole new frontier due to variations, dialects, and code-switching between languages,’’ said Mr. Nilekani.

India is set to become a global leader in population-scale voice AI, with far-reaching implications for language technology, governance, and everyday life, said Mr. Nilekani who is also co-founder of EkStep Foundation, a non-profit organisation he set up with Rohini Nilekani, and Shankar Maruwada with a view to creating literacy and numeracy opportunities for 200 million children in the country with the help of open-source digital infrastructure.

“Frugal design with population-scale infrastructure should be the mantra for all AI companies to create a real impact. It is a global requirement and India can do that in 22 languages, it will have global applications,’’ he stated.

He also said successful voice AI deployments in Indian languages were expected to come up over the next few years and these could create models for the rest of the world to adapt and follow.

“India has to lead the race to the top,’’ Mr, Nilekani insisted emphasising that there was critical need for guardrails in AI to prevent the spread of low-quality content, pornography and tools exploiting mental health and loneliness, versus a race to the top, focused on improving people’s lives. “It is about ensuring AI behaves as expected, doesn’t hallucinate, and stays within boundaries and this requires collaboration across governments, academic institutions, and the industry,’’ he added,

According to Mr, Nilekani, there is a greater need for vertical-specific knowledge: railways for PNRs and bookings; judicial systems for court matters; agriculture for farmers, soil, and pricing; and education and learning for children.

On his guiding principle for responsible AI, Nilekani said, “My compass is utility. Is it useful, relevant, does it improve lives, does it impact education, healthcare, legal services, access to food, or ensure better prices? AI should amplify humans, not replace them.’’

Mr. Dhupar said with the volume of work that was being done in the country, India was going to become the capital of intelligence. “India’s advantage in artificial intelligence does not lie in competing over frontier AI models but in deploying intelligence at population scale,’’ Mr. Dhupar added.