Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella giving a keynote address on stage

Satya Nadella’s India Visit 2024

A male teacher in a blue plaid shirt interacting with students in blue uniforms in a classroom 

India’s schoolteachers are drafting better lesson plans faster, thanks to a copilot

Schoolteachers in India could soon get a break. Sikshana Foundation is working with Microsoft Research India to introduce an AI copilot for teachers that shortens preparation time for lessons from an hour or more to just minutes. Thirty teachers in 30 government schools in and around Bengaluru have been trying out Shiksha copilot to create lesson plans complete with activities, video and assessments, modified to match resources. It is part of a wider effort by Microsoft Research India called Project VeLLM to make generative AI copilots accessible to everybody from teachers to farmers to small businesses.

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A woman leans against a pole looking at her phone in a group of women

Village by village, creating the building blocks for AI tools with work that also educates

“Earn, learn and grow” is the mantra of Karya, an organization that wants to revolutionize the way datasets are created in India and elsewhere. Its idea is simple: Pay rural Indians good wages to help train AI language models in their native tongues. At the same time, the material they’re reading into their smartphones is empowering them with the tools they need to thrive in the modern economy. The datasets, verified with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service, are in high demand because millions of Indians who don’t speak English or Hindi will benefit from access to apps and copilots.

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