The advent of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), exemplified by tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has brought both promise and anxiety for the education sector. Nowhere is this tension more apparent than in the debate over how students use AI for schoolwork. This dynamic was one of the key topics at a fireside chat between Arundhati Bhattacharya, President and CEO of Salesforce South Asia and Raghav Gupta, Head of Education, India and Asia-Pacific at OpenAI at the recent Mint All About AI Tech4Good Awards & Summit, sponsored by Salesforce. The conversation centred on the role of AI in addressing India’s educational challenges and fostering greater inclusion.
The challenge of genuine learning
A critical concern raised by Bhattacharya was the fear that students might “short-circuit the process of really understanding” concepts by using ChatGPT to simply produce answers for homework. “Personally, I think about this a lot because I am a parent as well,” Gupta said.
He explained the product-level solution by Open AI called ‘The Study Mode’. “If you click on the plus button at the bottom left of ChatGPT you switch on study mode. ChatGPT stops being somebody who gives you an answer but becomes like an AI tutor for you,” Gupta explained. This means that the student is being guided to think and find the answer.
Based on feedback from Indian parents, teachers and regulators, Open AI recently introduced this feature in ChatGPT. “Learning does take effort. If my child is in class 5… if I hand them a calculator there is no way that they will learn multiplication,” he said. He concluded that it is crucial to work with educational institutions to provide guidance on using this powerful tool responsibly.
Watch highlights from the conversation below,
Education as the core solution
Bhattacharya spoke about how education is the foundational solution to many of the country’s problems. The discussion moved to how generative AI can ensure equitable access to the right kind of education. Gupta revealed that globally, the number one use case of ChatGPT is education. With almost 800 million weekly users worldwide, India and the US are the largest markets, with India leading in student usage. He identified the core challenge as taking high-quality learning to the masses. “We have some great institutions, the IITs and IIMs, but then we also have a lot of very average institutions. How do you take higher quality education to everybody and how do you also make a lot more AI literate students because when they go into the workforce they will need some of that as well,” he said.
To tackle this, Open AI is focusing on localised impact. This includes Contextual Learning, where they are working with schools in remote areas. He gave the example of a school in Leh where teachers are being trained on using ChatGPT to generate educational material relevant to the local context. Additionally, they are fostering Research and Development by partnering with IIT Madras on an AI research collaboration to ensure the technology delivers beneficial outcomes tailored for the Indian context. It was felt that knowing how to use AI will be extremely critical for students once they enter the workforce.
Democratising technology and driving inclusion
The conversation moved to democratisation of AI for a country as vast and diverse as India. Gupta highlighted Open AI’s focus on key areas for inclusion and localisation by making ChatGPT perform well in Indian languages, understand local context and be accessible at a relevant price point. This is what can lead to everyday empowerment.
Gupta also shared a personal anecdote demonstrating the power of multimodal AI (voice and vision) in a localised context. He described using the Voice Mode feature, combined with the phone’s camera, to diagnose a plant’s health issue for his gardener in Hindi. The AI could “actually see what you are seeing” and provide the solution in the local language. The vision is to take this Voice + Video capability to every farmer, allowing the AI to instantly assess crop issues, weather data or market pricing, making technology useful even for those with low literacy.
The future of generative AI
When asked about the future impact of generative AI in three years, Gupta said: “In my mind, I think good technology earns the right to become a part of our life if it actually helps everyday life if it helps secure livelihoods in a country like India.”
He outlined a roadmap for India. First, he felt we need to scale usage well, by enabling people to use the powerful technology effectively. “This is not Google search. There is a lot more to it than basic prompting,” he said. Second is contextualisation for India, which involves improving the models to fully understand India’s diverse cultural and local needs. To measure this, Open AI launched India QA (INDQA), an evaluation framework of 2,500 questions built with 300 Indian experts to assess LLM performance in the Indian cultural context. Thirdly, we need to drive safe and secure usage, ensuring the models are built to benefit society and not cause harm.
Talking about training the younger generations to use generative AI, he felt that the youth are digital natives and are already comfortable with this technology. They need to be taught how to use it responsibly.
Conclusion
The fireside chat underscored generative AI’s vital role not just as a tool for efficiency, but as a potent agent for social good. The combined focus on developing AI literacy, building culturally and linguistically appropriate tools (like Study Mode and INDQA) and leveraging multimodal input (Voice + Video) illustrates a clear path toward making advanced technology inclusive. For a country like India, democratising access to high-quality education and essential information through AI is a crucial step towards building a more empowered future.
Note to Readers: All About AI is a Mint editorial initiative, sponsored by Salesforce.
