Google’s $15 billion plan for an AI hub in India: Is this the leap we need?
Google’s $15 billion AI hub in Visakhapatnam promises to generate jobs and help India’s economy. Capital inflows are welcome. But the real question is what such backend infrastructure can do to brighten India’s AI prospects where it matters most.
US-based Google will invest $15 billion over five years to set up an artificial intelligence (AI) hub in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, its CEO Sundar Pichai has said. With its gigawatt-scale compute capacity, subsea gateway and energy supply plan, this mega facility is expected to become Google’s biggest AI hub outside the US.
Across the world, there’s a rush to set up massive data centres to do the back-office work needed by AI tools. This is energy-intensive, so it’s reassuring that Google reportedly has a clean supply blueprint.
The capital inflows it will result in are especially welcome, given India’s need to keep net foreign direct investment flows positive. It will generate jobs by virtue of the spending involved, even if data centres are not big employers.
What India needs most of all, however, is an inside track that can help us catch up with the US and China on AI development. As we have often seen before, profits lie in the primary interface between people and their digital world.
As AI apps slowly take that role, can Indian AI plot its way to the front? Back-end opportunities should be taken, sure, but India must also try to leap ahead in the race to determine the evolution of AI.
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