New Delhi, Nov 19, 2024: Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, has awarded a $1 million grant to Karya, a non-profit organization that connects low-income communities globally to AI-based earning and learning opportunities. The grant will support Karya’s ongoing efforts to help tens of thousands of community members access AI-related economic opportunities and complete complex, employment-linked digital tasks via their smartphones, ranging from annotating data to providing feedback that improves performance of local language AI models.
The Google.org grant to Karya is the most recent step in Google’s growing commitment to building India’s AI-ready workforce. Last month, at the 10th edition of Google for India, Google launched AI Skills House, a new initiative to empower 10 million Indians with AI training, and announced a philanthropic grant of $4 million to Central Square Foundation to support awareness amongst 5 million students, educators and parents across India on the meaningful and responsible use of AI.
Alex Diaz, Head of AI for Social Good, Google.org, said: “At Google.org, we’re committed to seeing the transformative power of technology bring opportunity within everyone’s grasp. And with AI the most potent present-day force reshaping the global economy, we are bringing our resources and capabilities to ensure that the opportunities it unlocks are rewarding for everyone, regardless of their background or circumstance. We’ve been deeply encouraged to see Karya share this commitment, and are now proud to support its new chapter in nurturing both aptitude and appetite as it brings AI opportunities to underserved communities, and helps ensure the benefits of this revolutionary technology are truly universal.”
Karya will use the grant to design a digital skilling pathway, consisting of both a research-based curriculum and an experience-focused rubric, and translating it into 10 major Indic languages, thereby also aligning with the Government of India’s vision for an AI-ready workforce. Additionally, leveraging Generative AI, Karya will build a multilingual chatbot to provide real-time support for its app and web-based work platforms that provide access to AI-related digital tasks, enabling people across a range of digital competencies to avail of expanded economic opportunities in languages of their choice.
To build the multilingual chatbot, Karya will make its digital work platform accessible to partner organizations based in the African continent, conducting experience research before scaling it globally. An early prototype of the chatbot is helping people in Ethiopia to create AI-related tasks in local languages, including Amharic.
Karya will make the digital skilling pathway, as well as a report of its experience in developing the multilingual chatbot, freely and widely available to enable developers, technologists, non-profits, worker collectives and government bodies to create even more solutions that democratize access to digital work, and therefore new income streams, for communities across the world.
Manu Chopra, Co-founder and CEO, Karya, said: “Our goal at Karya is to lay down an ethical foundation for an AI-enabled future. AI may generate hundreds of billions of dollars in economic value, but the question we ask is — how much of that can we put directly into the hands of people who need it most? At Karya, we believe that low-income communities around the world are not only excellent beneficiaries of AI, but they are also excellent builders of AI. We want to use AI to bring earning and learning opportunities to low-income communities across the Global South.
"From building speech datasets in local Indic languages and evaluating LLM performance to annotating text, image and video datasets, Karya’s workers enable cutting-edge AI innovations across the world. Our workers can access these meaningful digital work opportunities through their smartphones, earning 20 times the local minimum wage while building skills and transforming their futures.”
The digital work opportunities facilitated by Karya over the last two years have enabled over 50,000 people in rural India, with approximately 90 percent representing marginalized communities, to access high-paying data annotation work that has supplemented their household incomes. With its proposed digital skilling pathway and multilingual chatbot for its digital work platform, Karya aims to bring AI-enabled economic opportunities to over 100,000 people by the end of this year, thereby contributing to poverty alleviation across the country and the world.
Such impact speaks to AI’s potential to facilitate wide-ranging multi-dimensional progress, highlighted by Google in a recent report, ‘An AI Opportunity Agenda for India’. The report outlines recommendations for India to harness the momentum generated by its significant tech talent and vibrant startup ecosystem, and maximize AI’s potential to boost economic growth, drive inclusive progress and propel the country to global leadership.
Google has also been deepening its focus on developing and enabling AI talent across the globe. At the United Nations 79th General Assembly in September 2024, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai announced the $120 Million Global AI Opportunity Fund that will partner with nonprofits and NGOs to make AI education and training available in local languages around the world, strengthening chances and capabilities of underserved communities to participate and succeed in an AI-powered future.
