AI Can Reinstate India at the Intellectual Summit

By combining the wisdom of ancient texts with cutting-edge AI, India could unlock breakthroughs in philosophy, science, and medicine

- Vivek Wadhwa

Silicon Valley may have birthed the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI), but China has shown how it can become a culturally infused force. DeepSeek, the Chinese AI model that garnered global attention, isn't simply replicating western capabilities. By training on a vast corpus of Chinese texts, it has absorbed the nuances of the nation's rich cultural, philosophical, and literary heritage. DeepSeek's superior performance in understanding Chinese philosophy, history, and classical literature underscores a crucial point: Training AI on homegrown data isn't just about language—it shapes the very nature of AI.

India has an even greater opportunity to redefine the future of AI. Our ancient texts hold advanced knowledge spanning mathematics, astronomy, medicine, governance, and philosophy. The Vedas, Upanishads, Arthashastra, and Tamil Sangam literature offer profound insights into topics ranging from consciousness to economic theory.

AI, at its core, is a sophisticated pattern recognition system trained on massive datasets. Large Language Models (LLMs) learn by analyzing text, identifying relationships, and generating responses based on detected patterns. Consequently, their understanding of the world is a direct reflection of their training data. If an AI is predominantly trained on western scientific papers, corporate documents, and pop culture, its worldview will be inherently western. Conversely, training in Chinese literature and philosophy, as China has done, cultivates a distinctly Chinese way of thinking.