Mark Zuckerberg has a new plan to save the world, or at least the parts of it he hasn't already broken. This week’s target: India. Specifically, the millions of Indians living with disabilities who, according to Meta’s latest PR blitz, are about to be fast-tracked into the global economy via the magic of generative AI.

It’s a familiar script. We’ve seen the "AI for Good" roadshow before. Usually, it involves a slickly produced video of a person in a rural village using a smartphone to do something they couldn't do yesterday. It’s heart-tugging stuff. It’s also a convenient way to distract from the fact that Meta’s core business model is currently a burning pile of regulatory fines and pivot-to-video trauma.

The play here is focused on using Llama—Meta’s open-source pride and joy—to build tools that translate sign language into text, turn messy visual environments into audio descriptions, and "simplify" job applications. On paper, it’s hard to argue with. India has one of the largest populations of people with disabilities in the world, and the systemic barriers they face are tall, thick, and very old. If a chatbot can help a visually impaired graduate navigate a dense corporate hiring portal, that’s a win.

But let's look at the friction.

First, there’s the hardware problem. Meta likes to talk about "democratizing" tech, but their AI models aren't exactly lightweight. To run the kind of multimodal AI that can reliably process real-time video for a blind user, you need more than a $100 Android phone and a spotty 3G connection in Uttar Pradesh. You need compute. You need bandwidth. And someone has to pay for it. Meta isn't handing out free H100 GPUs to NGOs in Delhi. They’re providing the "platform," which is tech-speak for "we built the engine, you figure out how to buy the gas."

Then there’s the data trade-off. We don't talk about this enough. For an AI to truly assist someone with a specific disability, it needs to know everything about them. It needs to see what they see, hear what they hear, and track where they go. Meta is essentially asking one of the most vulnerable populations on the planet to hand over their most intimate biometric and behavioral data in exchange for the chance at a call-center job. It’s a lopsided deal. In a country like India, which is still figure-skating on thin ice regarding comprehensive data privacy laws, this looks less like philanthropy and more like a massive R&D project disguised as a social mission.

The job market itself is another hurdle. You can give a person the best AI-powered resume builder in the world, but if the local HR department still won't install a wheelchair ramp or hire someone who communicates via a screen reader, the tech is just a shiny band-aid on a broken leg. Meta claims their AI will "bridge the gap" between skills and employment. It’s a nice sentiment. But AI doesn't fix a culture that views disability as a liability rather than a different way of being.

There’s also the "hallucination" factor. When a LLM makes up a fake historical fact, a journalist gets a headache. When an AI designed for accessibility misinterprets a flight of stairs or gives the wrong medical instruction because it’s "predicting" the next likely word instead of actually understanding the world, the consequences are physical. Meta is pushing these tools into the wild with the usual "beta" shrug, hoping the community will iron out the bugs. It’s a risky way to treat people who are already facing an uphill climb.

Let’s be real about the timing. Meta is currently fighting a multi-front war with regulators in the EU and the US. Their pivot to the Metaverse turned out to be a very expensive ghost town. They need a win. They need to show that they aren’t just a data-hungry advertising machine, but a benevolent architect of the future. India, with its massive user base and desperate need for infrastructure, is the perfect staging ground for this kind of reputational laundering.

It’s the classic Silicon Valley move: find a massive, painful human problem, throw a "free" tool at it, and hope nobody asks too many questions about the long-term cost of the subscription. If the AI actually helps a few thousand people find work, Meta will shout it from the rooftops. If it fails, or if it just becomes another way to harvest data from the Global South, it’ll be quietly buried in the next quarterly earnings report under "other initiatives."

The tech might be new, but the paternalism feels like a legacy feature. We're being asked to trust that the same company that struggled to keep hate speech off its platforms in Myanmar can now safely guide a blind person through a crowded Mumbai street.

How many "meaningful connections" does it take to make up for the fact that the house always wins?