Placing people at the heart of the AI story

Two hundred twenty thousand public registrations, 1,400 unique speakers, and 300,000 engaged participants - these numbers are only indicative of the scale of the India AI Impact Summit that will be hosted in New Delhi, over February 16-20.

- Rudra Chaudhuri

Approximately 500 pre-summit events were hosted within India and across the world. For days on end, television channels have highlighted the impressive list of AI leaders that will be reaching Delhi for what is nothing less than a striking AI carnival. From Sam Altman to Dario Amodei to Yann LeCun - most major names and firms in the AI universe will be present. This includes an impressive set of representations from across the Global South. Twenty-odd heads of State, close to fifty ministers, and thousands of CEOs and entrepreneurs from around the world will all be part of the blitz.It is easy to get swept away by these dazzling numbers and the star cast of speakers. Yet, what is equally important is the symbolic and pragmatic value of India hosting this summit for the present and the future of what Artificial Intelligence (AI) actually means for people, the planet, and progress. These are the three sutras that have served as the guiding principles for all seven working groups, a set of expert engagement groups, the summit agenda, and much else that will inform the main outcomes of the summit.

The India AI Impact Summit is the fourth in a series of Global AI Summits that began at Bletchley Park in the UK in 2023. Former British Prime Minister (PM) Rishi Sunak started this process. The aim then was to arrive at a "shared understanding of risk" of AI. Some of this was achieved. A declaration was published that underlined the need to "identify AI risks of shared concern" and "build risk-based policies" for individual countries. It kickstarted the creation of national AI Safety Institutes. India created its own institute a little more than a year ago.