Speaking at the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi today, Google CEO Sundar Pichai put three countries on record as proof that AI's leapfrog promise is already moving, a case that AI is giving countries something they have rarely had—a way to solve problems at scale without first spending decades building the systems that typically make that possible.
"No technology has me dreaming bigger than AI," Pichai said in his keynote. "We are on the cusp of hyperprogress and new discoveries that can help emerging economies leapfrog legacy gaps."
Damilare Odedina
Here is his proof
India — Monsoon flooding affects hundreds of millions of farmers across India annually. Getting timely, accurate forecasts to rural communities has historically been a last-mile problem that traditional systems have not solved. Last summer, the Indian government used Google's Neural GCM climate model to send AI-powered flood and weather forecasts directly to millions of farmers, the first time it had been done at that scale. "For the first time, the Indian government sent AI-powered forecasts to millions of farmers, possible in part because of our Neural GCM model," Pichai said.
El Salvador — Healthcare access remains out of reach for a large share of El Salvador's population, with no formal medical infrastructure covering significant rural and low-income areas. Google has an active partnership with the Salvadoran government, delivering AI-powered diagnosis and treatment to those patients. "Google has partnered with the government to bring affordable, AI-powered diagnosis and treatment to thousands who could never afford to see a doctor," Pichai said in his remarks.
Ghana — Most AI tools are built in and for English, which has kept large parts of the African continent bypassed at the user level. In Ghana, Google is working with universities and NGOs to build AI tools and expand open-source research across more than 20 African languages, directly targeting the language barrier that has limited AI's reach across the continent. "We're collaborating with universities and NGOs to expand research and open-source tools across more than twenty African languages," Pichai said.
He also pointed to Google DeepMind's AlphaFold as a fourth proof point; the Nobel Prize-winning protein structure model is now used by over 3 million researchers across 190+ countries to develop malaria vaccines and fight antibiotic resistance in countries that could never have independently funded that level of research.
Damilare Odedina
