Delhi pitch: AI must go beyond English, solve real problems

New Delhi: India on Thursday made a clear pitch - AI must work in many languages, solve real problems, and serve societies beyond a small, privileged group, and got leaders of tech giants to adopt the 'New Delhi Frontier AI Impact Commitments' - a voluntary framework aimed at diffusing the benefits of AI among developing and underdeveloped countries; and the Global South.Unveiled at the AI Impact Summit by IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, the commitments bring together global frontier AI firms and Indian innovators to promote responsible, inclusive, and culturally sensitive AI. The emphasis is on real-world use rather than high-level declarations. The framework outlines two key commitments adopted on the first day of the summit.The first focuses on transparency and data. Participating organisations will publish anonymised and aggregated statistical insights on how AI is being used across sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, education and public services. The aim is to build a clearer picture of AI adoption across economies and regions, helping govts design evidence-based policies on workforce transition, skills and productivity, while also tracking how AI use evolves over time.The second commitment addresses a long-standing gap in AI - language. Most AI systems today perform best in English, with uneven results across other languages and cultural settings. Under the new framework, organisations will work to assess and improve AI performance across a wide range of languages and contexts. This includes collaborating with govts, researchers and civil society to develop datasets, benchmarks and evaluation methods for under-represented languages, particularly those spoken in the Global South.Describing the New Delhi commitments as a key outcome, Vaishnaw said the initiative was designed to link innovation with inclusion.