Microsoft‘s Satya Nadella has revealed a new initiative to equip over 2 million people in India with AI skills.

What Happened: During his visit to India, Nadella unveiled the initiative, which he believes will play a crucial role in shaping the future workforce in India. The initiative is expected to create new job opportunities in the country, reported Business Today.

“I’m very excited to announce a new initiative around skilling. We are going to equip around 2 million+ people in India with AI skills. At the end of the day, taking the workforce and making sure they have the skills in order to be able to thrive in the new age is the most important thing that any of us can do. It is not just the skills but it is also the jobs that get created,” Nadella said.

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Nadella also highlighted the potential of AI to boost India’s economy. He pointed out that many Indian companies are already leveraging AI to their advantage, including Microsoft’s own AI tool, Copilot. He compared the situation to the Industrial Revolution in the UK, where significant progress was made by investing 10% of the country’s GDP in the railroad system. Similarly, he believes that heavy investment in new technologies like AI can greatly improve a country’s prospects.

Why It Matters: This initiative comes on the heels of Nadella’s visit to India, where he has been focusing on the theme of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its opportunities for 2024. Nadella’s visit to India was anticipated to underscore Microsoft’s commitment to leveraging technology to expand opportunities in India, with AI playing a transformative role in shaping “India’s Techade.”

During his visit, Nadella also praised the efforts of Karya, a local enterprise that uses Microsoft research in India to provide income sources to rural India. Karya creates datasets with the help of rural Indians, labeling, annotating, and categorizing data used to train AI, especially for the non-English speaking part of the Indian population. Karya claims that they pay rural Indians 20 times the minimum wage.

India is poised to be a major player in the global AI revolution, according to Microsoft India and South Asia President Puneet Chandok. He identified three key factors contributing to India’s AI prowess: the burgeoning startup ecosystem, India’s expertise in AI, and the substantial impact AI is likely to have on global GDP.

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