The India AI impact summit, one of the most high profile events of 2026 drew in large crowds from all across the nation and key stakeholders from the rest of the world to deliberate upon the AI & its impact upon society.
I had the good fortune of attending pre summit meetings at IIT Delhi where I learnt about some of the technical aspects that GOI together with the Anusandhan National Research Foundation are considering to position the nation to benefit from this wave of AI which has ,by this time ,largely proven itself to be one of the most transformative technologies to have been developed in the last century.
From what I understood the strategy seems to be this. First India is one of the biggest markets for new technology. The administration wants to leverage India's growing economic strength & purchasing capability of the middle class to incentivise big corporations to invest in India which would further enhance the rate of growth.
Second, it wants to build local capability in AI by leveraging its, quite significant , skilled computer science workforce to solve some of the social & scientific challenges that are unique to India.
Third, it wants to become the voice of the global south as it advocates for a just & beneficial use of AI. The themes of this year's AI impact summit Welfare for all happiness for all emphasized this decision.
Many of the talks that I attended focussed on how to make this strategy work. It was clear to see that the impact summit was successful in generating buzz. I interacted with many big names in the AI industry from Google and meta to Nvidia ,amd,hp & others. Global corporations are already well represented in India. How this translates into new investment specially for AI remains to be seen.
There is hardly any event where policy makers fail to trumpet the success of the India stack (aadhar,UPI and what not) in digitising government services and making them available to the ‘common man’. AI is the next frontier where these services could be made more intelligent through integration with existing api through data sharing. Data was indeed a big talking point. As all AI services need copious amounts of data to run. Numerous suggestions were made to collimate data streams from a multitude of sources: hospital records,insurance,and aadhar to streamline services.
AI has been incredibly successful in the scientific domain too. Presentations were made on how it could help in drug and material discovery as well as mitigate the effects of climate change by helping deliver precise,actionable insights. Some of the senior officials in the government articulated the problem statements they have & called upon the audience to come up with solutions to these problems using AI.
AI has proven very successful but there has been some anxiety regarding this adoption. An effort was therefore made to ensure that AI use is just & leads to creation of more opportunities rather than job losses. Ethical use of AI that leads to joy & welfare for all was the guiding principle.
AI as a technology is powered by data centers. India has traditionally been lagging behind in building new capacity for it but based on what I saw it should change rapidly now. Quite a few local players were present at the event ready to play a bigger role in advancing national interests. I learnt a lot during my engagement with organisations that design cooling systems for the servers making them run efficiently. Being able to power these data centers would be a challenge in the short term. But I think it's addressable with currently available technology considering data centers use a tiny amount of energy compared to the scale of service they provide 24/7.
It is difficult to critique the stand taken by the government here. Given the choices they have made the best possible moves. At least that's the way I am able to see it. Some of the claims I found to be a bit incredulous. For example AI helping solve climate change. They made the same claims with Blockchain but I haven't seen that make any noticeable change. I can't speak much for drug discovery but with regards to materials science I don't see how discovery of new material will lead to any noticeable difference in the field. Graphene was discovered decades ago. Not one breakthrough application has emerged. Materials science is a very very very conservative field. Materials are not replaced at all ever. We live in the silicon age but iron,copper,and stones all continue to be used extensively.
Privacy has always been a losing battle. The reasons for this are not hard to understand. Organisations that control technology don't care about the principles of democracy or rights of the people. Additionally they are supported by the government via backchannels through clandestine means to enable them to enforce their control.
Despite the tall,vehement claims of government leaders, democracy doesn't really exist. AI was developed in labs in secrecy. The technology that it runs on is jealously guarded under some made up national security lie that can be extended to mean whatever those in charge want it to mean. Everything is a national security issue. Even now the officials are not engaging in dialogue rather describing their strategy & describing their vision of where the nation must go. Partly this is due to lack of participation but in larger part it's the structuring that allows this system to persist. Those in control continue to gain more control. Tech hardly ever equalises. It makes people more prosperous but never places them on an equal footing.
AI will win. Perhaps it may even succeed in achieving welfare and joy for the majority. But to call this process democratic would be stretching the definition of democracy a bit too far. Therefore it is very important for nations in Africa & LATAM to take control of critical technologies without getting engulfed into the confusion of AI.
Do you care about international relations? Would you like to be a part of a non profit that seeks to foster international collaboration? Partner with us & use your skills in Science/Engineering/Research/Team Building/Consulting/Administration/Law/PR/Comms/Business to shape the future. Let's do this.
ABOUT bhū
bhū is a self funded non profit organisation dedicated to advancement of science and promotion of international relations.
We aim to promote international harmony through creation of specific councils and bodies for regulating and overseeing international issues and accelerate developments in nanotechnology, material science ,electrostatics, fluids, plasma science,thermodynamics and advanced manufacturing.
Let us work together
https://akshatjiwannotes.blogspot.com/p/bhu.html
Akshat Jiwan Sharma
Materials science/International relations/Partnerships
Mobile/whatsapp:+919654119771
email:getellobed@gmail.com
Comments
Post a Comment