As India pushes to deploy artificial intelligence to solve real-world problems, Meta says its AI tools are already being used on the ground across the country.
“I truly believe we’re on the cusp of a moment where almost anything is possible,” Alexandr Wang, Meta’s Chief AI Officer said at the India AI Impact Summit. But, he added, the goal is not abstract innovation and that science should serve society.
More than half a billion Indians use at least one of Meta’s apps daily, he noted. “People use our AI right here, right now. They’re getting value from it and building amazing things with it.”
From cancer detection to crop health
In healthcare, researchers at Ashoka University are using Meta’s SAM-3 model to speed up cancer diagnostics. Their AI system, Oncoseg, can help radiologists identify and segment tumours and at-risk organs “in seconds what once took hours manually,” he said.
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The same underlying technology is being applied in agriculture. “The beauty of general-purpose models is that the same technology that can segment tumors in the brain can also segment leaves to help farmers assess the health of their crops,” he said, referring to work done by Agripoint.
Tackling digital exclusionAccessibility was another focus area.
“More than 20 million people with disabilities in India are locked out of education, jobs, and digital services because the digital world wasn’t designed for them,” he said.
An Indian firm, Stem, has built “voice-first, AI-powered infrastructure” to help people with disabilities convert textbooks into accessible formats and receive personalised career guidance that factors in their disability.
Language as a development lever
India’s linguistic diversity also featured prominently.
Meta has open-sourced omni-lingual speech recognition models that support more than 1,600 languages. “It’s not a fantasy that, in a few years, we’ll have real-time voice-to-voice translation for every spoken language on Earth,” he said.
In India, Meta is working with the government’s AI Coach platform and providing datasets in 10 major Indian languages. “Technologies shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all — they should serve local challenges and opportunities,” he said.
Building responsibly or losing trust
Addressing concerns about safety and overreach, he acknowledged public skepticism. “You might be skeptical when I say we’re doing this responsibly but don’t just take our word. Take our incentives.”
“Our AI must work as promised, safely and securely. If it doesn’t, people won’t use it. We’ll lose customers, trust, and competitive edge.”
He said unlocking AI’s full promise requires “four building blocks: talent, energy, data, and compute,” along with strong public-private collaboration.
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