Microsoft AI instruments to bridge India’s 100+ language gaps

Enter Microsoft’s AI for Good initiative—the tech big’s umbrella program that tries to make use of AI to unravel issues in well being, environmental safety, and human improvement. The U.S. firm has used India to pilot a number of novel makes use of of the brand new expertise, similar to an app that makes use of AI to inform farmers the most effective time to sow seeds or a mannequin that makes use of satellite tv for pc pictures to forecast how a pure catastrophe may harm a weak inhabitants. 

However Microsoft and its AI researchers are notably fascinated with navigating India’s linguistic challenges, hoping it’d unlock breakthroughs elsewhere. “India’s complexity makes it a test bed for multilingual settings everywhere,” says Ahmed Mazhari, Asia president for Microsoft. “If you can solve and build for India, then you can solve and build for the world.”

Small languages and enormous language fashions

The Jugalbandi chatbot, which Microsoft debuted in Could 2023, is certainly one of AI for Good’s flagship initiatives. The chatbot is focused to rural farmers—particularly those that dwell in areas that don’t converse India’s extra widespread languages—who need to study or entry public providers, similar to making use of for a scholarship.

Jugalbandi makes use of a big language mannequin, developed with native analysis lab AI4Bharat, to parse a question, uncover the related data, then generate an easy-to-understand reply within the person’s native tongue. (Presently, Jugalbandi can translate 10 of India’s 22 official languages.)

(Fortune earlier featured Microsoft’s work with AI and Jugalbandi on its 2023’s “Change the World” checklist.)

One other Microsoft initiative referred to as VeLLM, or “Universal Empowerment with Large Language Models,” goals to enhance how GPT, the OpenAI-developed mannequin that underpins ChatGPT, works when utilizing less-popular languages. Most of right this moment’s giant language fashions work best in a handful of main world languages—primarily English and Chinese language—as a result of a lot knowledge are in these two languages. It’s tougher to coach AI on so-called low-resource languages, the place knowledge is scarce or non-existent.

VeLLM is the inspiration for different experiments with AI, like Shiksha, a generative AI bot that helps lecturers create new curricula in non-English languages shortly, liberating up extra to be spent on educating. 

‘Participatory’ design

Microsoft engineers like Kalika Bali, principal researcher for Microsoft Analysis India, are cautious of cutesy expertise options that don’t mirror how rural Indians dwell their lives.

Technologists have lengthy tried to make use of the South Asian nation as a testing floor to show that digital applied sciences—cheap laptops, affordable internet, and smartphone apps—can enhance high quality of life in rural India.

But not each initiative was successful, Bali notes dryly. She remembers one venture by which designers from a improvement group tried to create a recreation to assist ladies farmers in India entry vital data.

“The women gave that person such a disdainful look,” she mentioned. “They said ‘Do you think we have time for playing games?’”

As a substitute, Bali says she and her group pursue a “participatory” design course of. “We spend a lot of time with the communities that we are working for, trying to have them say what they want out of a technology, or how they want to solve a problem,” she says. 

Not simply social good

Microsoft, after all, isn’t simply fascinated with AI for its potential for social good. The U.S. tech big is developing its own AI products, hosted on its Azure cloud computing system. It’s additionally a key backer of ChatGPT developer OpenAI. The hype round AI has helped lift Microsoft’s inventory by 65% over the previous yr, pushing its market worth to $3 trillion, making it the U.S.’s most useful firm. 

Mahzhari sees quite a lot of alternative for Microsoft in Asia, the place there’s “an incredible pace of change and transformation across industries and geographies.” He factors to a number of examples the place Asian firms have turned to Microsoft’s generative AI providers: Lazada, the Southeast Asian e-commerce platform owned by Alibaba, used Microsoft instruments to create the primary e-commerce chatbot in Southeast Asia. 

Nonetheless, even when Microsoft’s experiments in India don’t do a lot for the corporate’s backside line immediately, they supply vital classes for the corporate going ahead.

“Our partnerships under AI for Good and other pilot initiatives enable us to pick up early signals for advancing AI security and safety,” Mahzhari says. These classes are then used to develop “policies for much-needed guardrails” on the brand new expertise. 

Bali is aware of that you may’t separate her work from Microsoft’s general enterprise curiosity in AI. 

“These are early forays in terms of how to make people who do not have access to technology get on the technology wagon,” she says. “Then they will become, hopefully, future technology users who would, amongst other things, also use Microsoft products.”

Fortune is internet hosting the inaugural Fortune Innovation Forum in Hong Kong on March 27-28. Specialists, traders, and leaders of the world’s largest firms will come collectively to debate “New Strategies for Growth,” or how firms can greatest seize alternatives in a fast-changing world.