In conversation with Pranav Khaitan, Senior Engineering Lead at Google AI and Member of World Food Program Technical Advisory Council

How did this start and Google be part of this initiative?

Thank you very much for the kind wishes. About two years ago, after having worked on AI for a while, I realised that even though AI was significantly helping our world, many parts of our society were still left behind and not fully benefiting from it. So, along with my team, I set out on a mission to help uplift sections of our society that needed it the most by focusing on the basic problem of global hunger. I came across the UN World Food Programme, an outstanding organisation that was already feeding tens of millions of people and has been hugely instrumental in reducing hunger across our planet. During our initial discussions, the senior leaders at the UN WFP were thrilled about the idea, and we developed a strong partnership to make it happen.

How did this programme help WFP and what changes will it bring and help people during crisis

Natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, affect large areas and millions of people, but responding to such disasters and supplying food to them has been a massive logistical challenge. To help solve this problem of humanitarian aid distribution, we developed an AI-based technology that could assess disaster damage within 24 to 72 hours and ensure timely delivery of aid to affected people. This technology would help crisis responders, including governments, NGOs, and UN organizations, get fast access to comprehensive and accurate assessments in the aftermath of disasters so that they can efficiently allocate limited resources. Providing food and other aid in a timely manner would help save lives in disaster affected regions.

What does a typical day at work look like for you?

Every day is different but most days include a series of project discussions, design reviews and hands-on engineering work. When I started my career at Google, almost all my time was spent on hands-on engineering work. But over time, my projects have gotten larger in size and interface with a large number of folks across the organisation so an increasing percentage of time is spent on project discussions. And of course, we do find time to also have fun during the day thanks to all my amazing colleagues at Google.

You did your second project with the World Bank. Tell us more about that.

Around the same time, when we started working with the UN World Food Programme, we also started a project in partnership with the World Bank to use AI technology to help prevent famines through proactive aid deployment. This project uses AI to predict famines early on and trigger rapid release of financing to mitigate its effects. This was an ambitious project that was announced at the UN General Assembly by the UN Secretary-General and the World Bank President along with the heads of all other UN agencies. It has been deeply humbling to work with such respected organisations that I have been inspired by ever since I was a small kid.

 Is it possible to use technology more efficiently without risking humanity?

Absolutely. Computer science and algorithms were created to serve humanity and to assist humans in speeding up tasks that were mundane or difficult for humans. AI is still in early stages and we have already seen beautiful examples of AI enhancing human lives in areas like conversational assistance. And that is indeed how it should be continued to be used. We need to be cognisant about how we develop algorithms in the future such that we can avoid any potential harmful effects. We as a society need to deeply understand the algorithms that are being built around us and ensure they are working as intended. I believe that the fear of technology depicted in fiction are largely overblown and aren’t realistic. But that being said, we cannot be complacent and we need to put in the right checks and balances where it makes sense.

How can create a future where algorithms doesn’t over power humans?

Almost all applications of AI that we see today are those where AI is used to assist humans and make humans more productive. That is what AI is best at and I expect that trend to continue. For example, in the Aid Distribution project that we did with the UN WFP, algorithms were not the decision makers themselves but were used as an input to help human experts make the final decisions. Similarly, in the field of diabetic retinopathy, AI is used to help doctors in diagnosing patients and consequently making this diagnosis accessible to a lot more patients. In order to make these technologies most useful for human experts, it is important that they be developed in close partnership with the domain experts such that the technology is best customized to suit the needs of the use case.

Where does India stand currently in terms of global comparison?

India is a fast rising contributor to this field thanks to the research being done in our cutting edge research universities and the engineering being done at our novel startups. India is emerging to be a major player in this domain after US and China. There have been wonderful examples of cutting-edge research in domains like healthcare coming out of India. I have been personally very inspired about the startups coming out of India. Almost every week, I learn about novel creative ways by which Indian startups are able to use Artificial Intelligence to solve a problem that was previously considered very difficult.

Tell us about your family and your education

I have been extremely fortunate to have been blessed with family members and friends who have supported me throughout this journey.  My father is a chartered account, my mother is a homemaker and my brother is a widely respected electronics engineering graduate from IIT Kharagpur. My brother continues to be my primary source of inspiration. I did my undergraduate education in Computer Science at National Institute of Technology Rourkela. Soon after completing Bachelors in Technology from NIT Rourkela, I went on to do Masters at Stanford University where I got to experience a wide range of learning opportunities including research in Artificial Intelligence. After completing my studies, I joined Google where I have been fortunate to work with an amazing team to develop AI technologies that help our billions of users.