New Delhi, February 19 Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla outlined an ambitious plan on Thursday to provide AI-powered tutors, doctors, and agronomy experts to Indians in the next couple of years, proposing that these public services be integrated within the Aadhaar ecosystem.
Speaking at a session of the AI Impact Summit in the national capital, Khosla, Founder of Khosla Ventures, proposed the creation of a non-profit company to build and operate these AI systems before transferring them into the Aadhaar ecosystem, alongside a Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-like service layer.
"Aadhaar allowed us to offer UPI. There is no reason why we cannot offer similar services to every Indian within a year or two, within the same identity-based system where the groundwork has already been laid," he said.
Khosla emphasized that the country must focus on applications that directly benefit "the bottom half of the population," arguing that only then would AI deliver transformative national impact.
"I am going to talk to you about some applications of AI that should be implemented immediately. What can be done today, in the next year or two, to reach a billion and a half people in this country with really impactful, immediate benefits," he asserted.
Khosla began by discussing education, noting that AI-based personal tutors are not futuristic concepts but are already being used by millions of students.
"The AI tutors I am talking about are far superior to human tutors," he asserted, explaining that they can dynamically identify what a student does not know and tailor lessons accordingly.
Khosla added that such AI systems could dramatically enhance the utility of the government's DIKSHA platform by organizing and personalizing its vast content library.
Turning to healthcare, he proposed AI-driven primary care systems available round the clock to every Indian at "almost negligible or no cost."
He said such systems could provide full primary care expertise, chronic disease management, mental health therapy, physical therapy, and nutrition coaching – areas where demand in India is rising sharply.
"These will make full primary care expertise available 24/7 to every Indian," he said, arguing that AI could multiply India's limited doctor resources.
The third pillar of his proposal focused on agriculture, where he called for providing every farmer, including those with small landholdings, access to a "PhD-level agronomist" via AI, available round-the-clock.
"Today, these massive impact services that could be done with hundreds of millions of dollars can be done very, very cheaply. This would allow us to scale medicine, teaching, education, and agronomy, and these services would have a greater impact on the bottom half of the population, who need them more than almost anyone else. That is exciting. If we don't do that, it would be a massive missed opportunity for us," he said.
