On Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that the tech giant aims to provide skilling opportunities in artificial intelligence to 2 million Indians by 2025.

This skilling initiative—ADVANTA(I)GE INDIA—is part of Microsoft’s Skills for Jobs program, which is designed to empower India’s workforce. The skilling “will focus on training individuals in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, as well as rural areas, enabling people to participate in the new era of AI and unlock inclusive socio-economic progress,” the company said.

The announcement came at Microsoft’s “CEO Connection” event in Mumbai. Nadella is on a two-day visit to India, an annual tradition, where he will focus on AI and the opportunities that come with it.

Speaking at the event, Nadella also emphasized the necessity for cooperation between India and the United States in establishing AI norms and regulations.

More about the initiative: Under its skilling initiative, Microsoft will collaborate with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and 10 state governments to offer basic and advanced AI training to 500,000 students and job seekers across 100 rural vocational education institutions and training centres.

Microsoft also plans to provide AI technical skills training to 100,000 young women in tier-2 and tier-3 cities and “raise awareness of responsible AI use and AI-enabled careers” for 400,000 students in remote and tribal regions.

In partnership with the Indian government’s National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building, the tech major will also educate 250,000 government officers on generative AI.

Lastly, Microsoft and LinkedIn will host the India Nonprofit Leaders Summit in April this year, enabling 2,500 nonprofits and NGOs to leverage AI resources to train 750,000 learners.

Nadella said that his hope is for AI’s global diffusion to result in “equal distribution of economic growth,” according to Reuters.

The company is also set to invest Rs 16,000 crore to build three additional data centres in Telangana, bringing the total proposed centres to six. In 2022, it had announced its initial investment of Rs 16,000 crore in three campuses for captive data centres.

The important question: Nadella’s AI focus comes amidst a wave of layoffs in the tech industry as companies are increasingly looking to become lean with the help of AI and automation.

Acknowledging that job displacement is inevitable as new technologies emerge, Nadella however, was optimistic that the transition could be navigated with “policy tools and the actual tools”. He told CNBC TV18 that the two could be effectively used for a positive transition, even for countries like India.

He also said that there is a “need for more software developers all over the economy, not just in the tech sector” and that the current generation of AI reduces the learning curve, making it easier for mid-career professionals to acquire new skills.

A month into the new year, tech firms like Google, Amazon, video game software provider Unity Software, Xerox, Audible and Snapchat parent Snap have already jumped on the layoffs bandwagon.

In India, IT majors such as Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys also collectively fired more than 21,000 employees between June and September last year. Even campus hiring for fresh graduates hit a record low as the Indian tech industry reels from a slowdown in demand. For more context, read: The reason tech companies are laying people off, yet again.

We have also written about how companies are rushing to skill workers in AI tools but the businesses’ revenue and profits from such AI training efforts remain unclear. Read: IT giants are training humans to be good at AI. Will it help?