Why India Urgently Needs to Build Its Own AI Systems

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping economies and societies at an unprecedented pace. India faces an urgent question: Will we take control of our AI future, or will foreign-built models shape our economy, languages, and perception of history?

- Arun Subramaniyan

The US and China are investing billions of dollars in AI, entrenching their dominance. Delay risks India becoming permanently dependent on foreign AI models.

India must immediately train its own AI models, leveraging offshore computing environments such as Singapore while rapidly expanding domestic AI infrastructure. We can't wait for AI supercomputers to get built in India; we must act now with available resources and scale as we build our own AI capabilities. This is not just a technological ambition; it is an economic necessity, a cultural imperative, and a national security priority.

India's intellectual heritage spans Sanskrit mathematical treatises, Tamil Sangam literature, and Buddhist scriptures, among others. Yet, much of this remains inaccessible to AI models predominantly trained on Western and Chinese datasets. If AI is trained only on English and Chinese sources, India's vast historical and literary wealth risks digital erasure.