Google’s vice president of global network infrastructure and chairman of the Pacific Connect Initiative, Brian Quigley says Artificial Intelligence (AI) was used to train 255 languages to understand Fijian.
Mr Quigley made this statement at the Google ICT Facility Groundbreaking ceremony in Natadola last Saturday.
“This year in Google Translate, we used AI to train 255 languages to understand Fijian,” Mr Quigley said.
“So, you can now access the world’s information in your native language that didn’t exist until July of this year. And no human was involved.
“We can upload the languages of the world and upload Fijian and also Marshallese, Tongan and other 109 other languages were added.
“The benefits of AI are absolutely amazing.
“Secondly, in addition to accessing the world’s information in your own language, we think it has the opportunity to advance scientific discovery to benefit humanity.”
He said Google had launched AI system Alpha fold completely free to the scientific and research community this year.
“Over 25,000 scientists in Brazil alone were using Alpha fold, and just two weeks ago at a Nobel Prize.
“We believe the third opportunity is helping people that face the path of the climate crisis, we’ve announced a product flood hub that predicts floods up to seven days in advance and can allow governments, countries and people to prepare and react.
“So, we believe there’s three areas that we need to focus on, to make sure AI can be available for all, and the first is digital infrastructure. That’s what this facility is about.
“It will become a digital connectivity hub for all of the Pacific.”
