On April 25th, International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) and Microsoft announced the launch of A4I – the AI Innovation and Inclusion Initiative, a collaborative effort aimed at advancing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to create inclusive, impactful, and scalable solutions for underserved communities.
Through this initiative, Microsoft and IIIT-B resolved to work closely to build a framework for partnerships and sustained scaling and support. This framework will help scale innovations already developed and tested by Microsoft into widely accessible Digital Public Goods (DPGs). The goal is to foster an ecosystem that nurtures AI-driven innovations for long-term societal impact.
A4I will collaborate with domain-specific partners in education, healthcare, and accessibility to build solutions that are impactful and replicable at scale.
As the first step, A4I will take up following projects, each of which originated at Microsoft Research India, to deploy at scale:
- Shiksha Copilot and its extension, Shiksha SEEDS, in the education and accessibility domains, aimed at empowering educators.
- ASHA Saheli project in the health domain, which focuses on last-mile healthcare delivery.
These projects are driven on the field by the following domain partners: Sikshana Foundation, Vision Empower Trust, and Khushi Baby.