NEW DELHI: Alexander Wang, Chief AI Officer at Meta, on Wednesday outlined an ambitious vision for "personal superintelligence" while positioning India as central to the next phase of global artificial intelligence development.
Speaking at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Wang said AI must be built to serve local needs and not become a one-size-fits-all technology shaped solely by Silicon Valley priorities.
"Three and a half billion people use at least one of our apps every day. More than half a billion are in India alone," Wang said, underscoring India's scale and strategic importance to Meta's AI roadmap.
Wang highlighted how AI tools are already being deployed across India — from automatic translation of Reels into regional languages to small businesses creating WhatsApp Business agents within minutes to engage customers.
He pointed to Indian developers building AI solutions for accessibility and healthcare. With over 20 million people with disabilities in the country, voice-first AI systems are being used to convert textbooks into accessible formats and provide personalised career guidance. In healthcare, AI models are helping researchers accelerate tumour detection and medical image segmentation, reducing hours of manual work to seconds.
India's linguistic diversity, Wang said, makes it a critical testing ground for AI systems. Meta has open-sourced speech recognition models capable of recognising over 1,600 languages and is collaborating with the Indian government's AI Kosh platform to provide datasets in 10 major Indian languages.
For a country with dozens of widely spoken languages, Wang argued that real-time voice-to-voice translation — potentially embedded in wearable devices — could be transformative.
Wang laid out Meta's long-term ambition - building "personal superintelligence" — AI systems that understand an individual's goals, preferences and context, and act as proactive assistants.
Unlike generic chatbots, he said, these systems would help users manage health routines, organise events, track projects and free up time for personal pursuits. "It won't just do your admin. It will be an extension of you," he said.
Meta plans to release new AI models in the coming months, with deeper integration across its platforms. Wang said the company expects to "push the frontier" as the year progresses.
Governance, policy and competition
Acknowledging concerns about Big Tech dominance and screen addiction, Wang argued that responsible deployment is a competitive necessity. "People won’t trust us with deeply personal AI unless we build it safely and securely," he said, pointing to Meta’s publication of model cards, evaluation benchmarks, red teaming and risk assessments.
However, Wang stressed that AI's future in India will depend not just on corporate innovation but on policy alignment.
He identified four building blocks for AI leadership: talent, energy, data and compute. Governments and industry, he said, must collaborate to ensure access to these inputs while avoiding fragmented regulations that could stifle innovation.
For India — which has positioned itself as a voice for the Global South in technology governance — the opportunity lies in shaping AI systems around local languages, public service delivery, healthcare, agriculture and small businesses.
India's massive digital public infrastructure, deep engineering talent pool and large user base make it one of the most consequential AI markets globally. If aligned with strong policy frameworks and investments in compute capacity and energy infrastructure, it could also become a major AI innovation hub.
Wang framed the moment as historic. "We are on the cusp of a moment where anything is possible," he said, calling for closer public-private collaboration.
