Microsoft Investment To AI: Giant technology company Microsoft, expressing concern over the growing AI disparity between developed countries and the ‘Global South’ (developing countries), has announced that it aims to reduce this gap by investing $ 50 billion by the end of this decade. This announcement was made by the company’s Vice Chair and President Brad Smith and Vice President in charge of AI Natasha Crampton at the ‘India AI Impact Summit’.
According to the company’s ‘AI Diffusion Report’, inequality in access to AI could limit economic opportunities and growth, widening the economic gap between the Global North (developed countries) and the Global South. Microsoft said the $50 billion investment will focus on five key pillars – infrastructure, skill development, multilingual AI, local innovation and measurement of AI adoption.
There will be investment of 50 billion dollars
Last fiscal year, the company spent more than $8 billion on data center infrastructure serving the global south. This includes India, Mexico and countries of Africa, South America, South-East Asia and West Asia. The company has set a target of increasing internet access to 25 crore underprivileged people, of which 10 crore are in Africa. Through partnerships it has already reached 117 million people in Africa.
Under skill development, Microsoft spent more than two billion dollars on cloud, AI and digital training programs in the last financial year. Under the ‘Microsoft Elevate’ initiative, the target is to provide AI certification to two crore people by 2028. After training 56 lakh people in India in 2025, there is a plan to equip 2 crore Indians with AI skills by 2030. Apart from this, under the ‘Elevate for Educators’ program, a target has been set to reach 20 lakh teachers and 80 lakh students from more than two lakh institutions.
AI training to 2 crore by 2030
The company says that linguistic barriers are a major obstacle to the spread of AI, so investment in multilingual and multicultural AI systems is being increased. Also, community-based AI assessment tools are being developed in collaboration with Indian institutions.
In terms of developer ecosystem, Microsoft said India’s community of 24 million developers on GitHub is the second largest and fastest growing among the top 30 economies. Its annual growth rate since 2020 has been more than 26 percent. Overall, this investment by Microsoft is being considered a big step towards making AI more inclusive and balanced at the global level.
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