Community Jameel launches breakthrough AI initiatives at the India AI Impact Summit
NEW DELHI, INDIA – 20 FEBRUARY 2026
Community Jameel concluded its participation at the 2026 India AI Impact Summit today, following a week of events and announcements of breakthrough artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives.
Hosted at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi by the Government of India and led by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), the summit welcomed over 500,000 visitors, including heads of state and leaders of global AI companies and Indian industry.
AI for Social Good and AI Evidence Playbook
The summit kicked off on 17 February with AI for Social Good: Impact that works, a day-long seminar hosted by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
Speakers included:
- Shri S Krishnan, secretary, MeitY, Government of India
- Professor Michael Kremer, Nobel laureate, J-PAL affiliate and University Professor in Economics, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago
- Iqbal Dhaliwal, global executive director, J-PAL
- Maggie Johnson, global head, Google.org
- George Richards, director of Community Jameel
- Ziad Obermeyer, MIT Jameel Clinic advisory board member; University of California, Berkeley
At the seminar, J-PAL launched the AI Evidence Playbook, which is designed to help support decision-making on the use of AI in development.
The playbook was developed as part of Project AI Evidence (PAIE, pronounced π), J-PAL's USD 7.5 million initiative to evaluate and improve AI solutions tackling entrenched social challenges. PAIE identifies which AI solutions work and for whom, scaling up only the most effective, inclusive and responsible solutions – while scaling down those that may potentially cause harm.
PAIE is supported by Google.org, Community Jameel, the UK Government's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and Eric and Wendy Schmidt, and collaborates with Amazon Web Services.
The playbook was also front-of-mind at the AI for Social Good high-level reception convened by Community Jameel, J-PAL and the UK Government at Goals House, in the Kathika Cultural Centre in old Delhi.
The meeting featured remarks from:
- Kanishka Narayan, Minister for AI and Online Safety, UK Government
- Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Regius Professor of Computer Science, University of Southampton
- George Richards, director of Community Jameel
- Iqbal Dhaliwal, global executive director, J-PAL
- Owen Larter, senior director and head of frontier policy and public affairs, Google DeepMind
AI4D announces new initiatives in Asia and Africa
In New Delhi, David Lammy, British deputy prime minister, led the announcement of three new initiatives of AI for Development (AI4D), a programme supported by FCDO, IDRC, Community Jameel and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency:
- Asian AI4D Observatory, supporting responsible AI innovation and governance across South and Southeast Asia
- African Language Hub, enabling AI to work in 40 African languages, making the technology more inclusive and accessible for millions
- AI4D Compute Hub at the University of Cape Town, giving African innovators the compute power they need to turn ideas into impact.
With GBP 60 million committed to the initiative, AI4D aims to foster safe, inclusive and responsible AI ecosystems that empower people and accelerate progress on challenges in international development.
The announcements follow the 2025 AI for Africa conference in Cape Town, where Community Jameel joined FCDO and IDRC to deploy AI4D support for J-PAL and IDinsight, a research organisation, through the AI Evidence Alliance for Social Impact (AEASI), a GBP 2.75 million initiative to advance the evidence-informed deployment of AI solutions for social good in Africa and Asia.
Anthropic partners on TaRL
On 19 February, speaking at the opening plenary, Dario Amodei, co-founder and chief executive officer of Anthropic, announced a collaboration with Pratham Education Foundation, a longtime partner of Community Jameel and J-PAL.
As well as developing an Anytime Testing Machine for Pratham to facilitate assessments, Anthropic will partner on Pratham’s Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) programme, which delivers remedial classes in schools to help fallen-behind pupils catch up with their peers. The collaboration is called Tech in TaRL.
TaRL has been rigorously evaluated with J-PAL and scaled up to reach millions of children in India and 12 countries in Africa. As part of PAIE, J-PAL researchers Daron Acemoglu, Iqbal Dhaliwal and Francisco Gallego will work with Pratham to study the effects and potential of integrating AI in TaRL on teachers’ productivity and students’ learning.
Evidence for AI in Health
On 20 February, the Gates Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation and Wellcome Trust announced Evidence for AI in Health (EVAH), a new USD 60 million initiative aimed at generating robust evidence for AI tools in healthcare.
Delivered in partnership with J-PAL and the African Population and Health Research Centre, EVAH will support locally led evaluations of AI technologies in low- and middle-income countries over the next three years. The initiative seeks to ensure that AI tools – ranging from disease prediction models to large language models – are safe, effective and equitable within the clinical settings where they are most needed.
The initiative seeks to ensure that AI tools – ranging from disease prediction models and computer vision to large language models and multimodal AI – are safe, effective and equitable within the clinical settings where they are most needed.
EVAH will work with country partners to select tools for evaluation that align with local health priorities and can be integrated into primary and community healthcare settings.
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