New Delhi: OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has launched a major new project for Indian schools, making the country a “lighthouse” for its global plan. The “OpenAI Learning Accelerator” is the first program of its kind in India. It aims to provide teachers and students more power through AI research, training, and better access to its resources.
A new research partnership with IIT Madras, funded by a $500,000 (about Rs 4.5 crore) grant from OpenAI, is a big part of this endeavor. IIT Madras will do long-term studies with this partner to find out how AI may help students learn better and come up with new ways to teach, using ideas from cognitive neuroscience. The results of this study will be made available so that they can be used to improve teaching and learning and to make new products in the future.
OpenAI wants to speed up the use of AI by giving away over half a million free ChatGPT licenses to teachers and students in government schools, technical institutes, and K–12 schools over the next six months. The Ministry of Education (MoE), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the Alliance for Re-Imagining School Education (ARISE) are all helping with this project. Teachers will get premium access to ChatGPT for lesson preparation, assignments, and student engagement through the free licenses. Students will also be able to use features like “Study Mode,” which gives them step-by-step instructions and interactive tests.
OpenAI has named Raghav Gupta as its Head of Education for India and Asia Pacific to oversee this big growth. Gupta will be in charge of making OpenAI’s products easier for teachers and students to use. He has worked in education and consumer technology for more than 20 years, most recently as Managing Director for India and Asia Pacific at Coursera.
The timing of this news is interesting because it comes just before OpenAI founder Sam Altman’s planned trip to the country next month. The corporation has also said that it will open its first office in New Delhi later this year, which shows how important India is to its strategy. OpenAI is counting on the huge number of ChatGPT users in India to help develop its global education plan. India already has the most ChatGPT students in the world.
OpenAI is investing in India because it sees it as a key testing ground for its future projects. The business has launched a new ChatGPT Go subscription tier just for India and improved support for Indic languages.