Summary of this article
At India AI Summit 2026, Microsoft researcher Kalika Bali argued that Western AI largely fails to recognise India’s caste dynamics, because models are built on datasets shaped by different social realities.
She said that in India, caste remains the dominant axis of inequality, and this blind spot can lead to biased or irrelevant AI outcomes.
Highlighting how inclusivity and safety standards vary across regions, Kalika Bali, Principal Researcher at Microsoft, shared India as an example where caste remains a central social reality and an area where many Western-developed models still fall short.
