A new paper examines how Artificial Intelligence impacts the linguistic and cultural foundations of the Indian subcontinent, characterizing AI as a double-edged sword that can enable inclusion but also homogenize worldviews. The authors trace the historical development of Natural Language Processing in this region, analyzing structural challenges like rich morphology, complex scripts, and diglossia.
The study discusses the role of Indic foundation models in addressing resource gaps and proposes a research direction called 'Culture Sensing' based on hermeneutic reasoning. This approach aims to ensure equitable performance across low-resource languages and produce outputs that are culturally meaningful.
By combining past work with emerging trends, the paper outlines directions for developing more robust and inclusive Indic foundation models.