To strengthen India's agriculture sector and make AI models more sensitive to the country’s linguistic and cultural diversity, Google on Thursday launched a new agricultural monitoring and event detection (AMED) application programming interface (API).
The company also announced a collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur to build localised datasets on India’s rich cultural tapestry. It will help in equipping global Large Language Models with better linguistic and cultural context at the local level.
The new mechanism will provide information on crops and field activity across India that will eventually empower the ecosystem to build targeted solutions that support agricultural productivity and resilience, the global tech giant said in a statement.
The API details the type of crop on individual fields across India, as well as each field’s size and corresponding sowing and harvesting dates. It will also provide historical information of last three years about the agricultural activity in each field.
“With AI research -- and especially with AMED building on the foundation of ALU -- we’re working on accelerating crucial shifts, transforming broad insights to granular, real-time data, so that increasingly impactful solutions not only translate into benefit for India’s farmers, but also bolster the nation against rising climate risks," said Alok Talekar, lead, agriculture and sustainability research lead, Google DeepMind.
“At Google, along with charting new frontiers in foundational AI, which forms the backbone of many of our launches in the Gemini era, we have continued advancing fundamental research that addresses some of the most pressing challenges facing humanity," said Dr Manish Gupta, Senior Director for India and APAC at Google DeepMind.
By adding more localised data — such as various languages, dialects, and cultural quirks that aren't currently included in AI training — Google's Amplify Initiative seeks to fill in knowledge gaps in Large Language models.
“We’re thrilled to collaborate with Google on the Amplify Initiative and open a new chapter in global AI development," stated Dr Mainack Mandal, Assistant Professor, IIT Kharagpur.
