Google Grants $1 Million to Digital Work Platform Karya
In a significant move towards bridging economic disparities and fostering technological inclusivity, Karya, a data design and collection platform, has been awarded a remarkable $1 million grant from Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google. This collaboration promises to bring valuable AI-related economic opportunities to tens of thousands of individuals from lower-income communities.
Karya, which identifies itself as a “data cooperative,” is set to utilize this funding for a mission that includes training and development aimed at enabling communities to engage in AI-driven tasks. These tasks encompass data annotation, providing crucial feedback, and enhancing AI model performances in localized languages.
With this investment, Karya is embarking on an exciting journey to design a comprehensive research-based curriculum. They plan to develop an experience-oriented rubric across 10 major Indic languages. An innovative GenAI-based multilingual chatbot is also on the horizon, intended to offer real-time support for both their app and web-based work platforms that enable easy access to these digital tasks.
The creation of this multilingual chatbot is just one step in Karya’s expansive vision. Initially focusing on experience research, the platform will provide its digital solutions to partner organizations in Africa, with broader global scaling planned. An early version of this chatbot is already making waves in Ethiopia, empowering communities by creating AI-related tasks in local languages such as Amharic. Looking to the future, Karya aims to share its educational material and chatbot development manual with developers, technologists, non-profits, worker collectives, and government entities. This openness will pave the way for even more innovative solutions.
In the past two years, Karya asserts that it has successfully brought high-paying data annotation work to 50,000 people in rural India, with half of these individuals coming from marginalized communities. With their new digital skilling initiatives and multilingual chatbot, Karya has set an ambitious goal to reach 100,000 people by the close of this year.
Manu Chopra, co-founder and CEO of Karya, expressed the organization’s core belief: “At Karya, we believe that low-income communities around the world are not only excellent beneficiaries of AI but they are also excellent builders of AI. We want to use AI to bring earning and learning opportunities to low-income communities across the Global South.”
Chopra further emphasized the impact of their work, stating, “From building speech datasets in local Indic languages and evaluating LLM performance to annotating text, image and video datasets, Karya’s workers enable cutting-edge AI innovations across the world. Our workers can access these meaningful digital work opportunities through their smartphones, earning 20 times the local minimum wage while building skills and transforming their futures.”
The grant from Google underscores the tech giant’s commitment to creating technological avenues for communities with limited access to such opportunities. As Karya continues to expand its reach, the partnership stands as a testament to empowering the underserved with skills that align with current and future technological trends.
As Karya progresses with its projects, the global community eagerly follows its advancements, recognizing the potential impact on the socio-economic fabric of lower-income regions. With the support from Google.org, Karya’s drive to empower communities through AI not only challenges existing disparities but also highlights the central role these communities can play in shaping the future of AI technology.
