AI can be 'Fastag' for India's growth: Google India head Sanjay Gupta

It can break barriers to information accessibility, says Google V-P Sanjay Gupta

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Sanjay Gupta, country head and vice-president, Google India, said that artificial intelligence (AI) can be the ‘FasTag’ for the country’s growth and break the barriers to information accessibility. 

Gupta was in conversation with Harsh Jain, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Dream11 and Dream Sports, at the Mumbai Tech Week on Sunday.

The two-day event is being hosted by Tech Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai (TEAM). 

While pointing out the similarities between AI and FASTag, Gupta further said that AI has been ‘India’s FASTag’ for its ability to zoom past ‘arbitrary toll-gates’ of challenges. 

He also added that with AI, one needs to focus on reskilling.

“One of the other things I worry about is as AI comes, people need to reskill. So, YouTube as a platform enables Indians to gain skills, and reskill by leveraging the power of video, which in some ways is language agnostic,” Gupta added. 

“It’s not just technology that has transformed India, Indians too have transformed technology. But the question is whether we are in a phase where this is enough or are there more challenges to be solved. A big challenge to solve is the arbitrary and invisible toll gates,” he said. 

Gupta was referring to challenges such as language and access to capital, among others. 

“The reality is that language and literacy still determine who can access information. That privilege still determines if somebody can access capital or not. And, the size of one’s business still determines the height of one’s ambition. Time has come to demolish all these arbitrary and artificial toll gates. Here is the power that comes with AI,” he added. 

He said that YouTube is working towards becoming a learning platform, and not just an entertainment platform. AI will give a fillip to the video platform to become a learning resource. 

“Just a few years back, it (YouTube) was seen as a great entertainment platform. But to me, when you go down to villages, or small towns, YouTube is more like a learning platform than entertainment. With AI, it'll get powered even more,” he said. 

Gupta elucidated that the ‘next thing’ for the video platform into making it a learning platform is to enable content creators create content using in-house tools. The learning platform can also have an online test facility that users can take on YouTube itself for self-assessment. 

“One of the things that YouTube is thinking about is how do we make it a stronger learning platform. And, how to enable content creators create content and use the tools within YouTube. You can watch the content, and even do a test online on YouTube while staying on it to see how good you are,” he added.