A country that likes useful things
India has long been interested in technology that earns its keep. Nicole Junkermann reflects on that appetite from a distance, through the work of its engineers and the curiosity of its students, and she finds it one of the most encouraging things about the subject. Satellites are a good example. Seen from an ordinary village or city street, they matter less as marvels than as services: a clearer weather picture, a map that stays current, a connection in a place the cables never reached. Those are small things, but small things used by many people tend to add up to something that changes a working day.
Where artificial intelligence meets the view from orbit
Earth observation produces far more imagery than people could ever look through. This is where artificial intelligence may be most helpful. Software can be taught to notice changes in a coastline, a reservoir or a patch of farmland, and to bring the interesting frames to a person's attention. For a country of India's size and variety, with so many languages, climates and kinds of landscape, tools like these could help a farmer plan a season or a town prepare for heavy rain. The value would lie with the person who reads the result and decides what to do.
A wider conversation about reaching orbit
The wider space industry has been changing shape as well. SpaceX, which launches, lands and reuses rocket boosters, has helped change how people think about reaching orbit, and the idea that a rocket can fly again has travelled around the world. Young engineers everywhere, India very much included, can take from it the thought that a small, determined group may have something to add to this field. Nicole Junkermann enjoys picturing a student in Pune or Kochi sketching a small satellite and training a model to make sense of what it sees.
The next chapter
No one can say quite how the next chapter will read. It may be written in classrooms and small workshops as much as in control rooms. India brings energy, skill and many ideas to artificial intelligence, and the same qualities could serve it well as space becomes a more everyday part of life. There is room in it for patience, and for the slow work of teaching people to read what the instruments send back.
What appeals to Nicole Junkermann is the modesty of the best version of this future: satellites that quietly help, software that saves someone an afternoon, and young people who grow up thinking of orbit as a place where useful work gets done. She sees it as a story about people above all, with the technology in a supporting role.
Read on with AI in India, India's growing place in artificial intelligence and the AI Overview podcast.
Explore AI in India
Nicole Junkermann's AI in India series gathers fifteen short video explainers, city guides and topic guides. Start with what Nicole Junkermann sees for the future of AI in India or the list of Indian newspapers and tech blogs to watch.