IndiaAI Mission runs into challenges

The country's attempts to develop the technology indigenously must double down on resources, reports Aashish Aryan

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Bernstein, a wealth management firm, in a recent report raised sharp questions about India's ₹10,372-crore artificial intelligence (AI) mission, warning that the programme risks becoming inconsequential on the global stage.

The report said the "highly publicised government fundspread thinly across a handful of startups building foundational models-barely registers globally." It feared that American organisations with deeper pockets and better infrastructure are likely to dominate AI, as they did in earlier waves of technology.

The report flagged risks from allowing companies such as OpenAI, Perplexity and Gemini to enter India's market with discounted versions of their AI models, which could undercut domestic startups.

"India is at a crucial point-allowing access to foreign LLMs could cripple the local ecosystem, while banning them would seem far too escalatory," the report noted, referring to large language models, foundation blocks of AI trained on massive amounts of text and code to understand, summarise, and generate humanlike language.

"The IndiaAI 'mission' paper looks ambitious, but the reality is a repeat of tech dominance 1.0: US players, with deeper pockets and stronger infrastructure, are poised to win all over again - by using low prices to bury any homegrown alternative, just like last time," it said.

A review of what the IndiaAI Mission has achieved and comments from industry experts highlight efforts the country needs to make for the technology.