Made in India AI, for India and the world

If India doesn't develop aatmanirbharta in AI, our future may involve having AI services powered by our own data, but owned by others, and then sold back to us

- Amitabh Kant

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to transform and revolutionise the way we live and work, it’s essential to recognise its vast potential and harness its power to drive positive and constructive societal change. It is imperative for India to develop sovereign capabilities in this field for three primary reasons.

First, aatmanirbharta (self-reliance) will spur our domestic startup ecosystem and attract private sector investment. Other AI leaders are already seeing the benefits of this independence. For instance, China recently banned Nvidia chips to boost sovereign chip-making capacity.

Second, building AI attuned to the nuances, culture, history, and languages of India will make AI accessible and applicable to every Indian. Third, responsible sovereign capability in this field will become increasingly important for national security. For this, you need advanced models that keep clear records of where their data comes from (data-lineages) to prevent hidden malicious behaviour that could emerge at critical moments.

The essential ingredients for building this capability are threefold: Data, computing power, and skilled talent.

Today, Open AI’s ChatGPT in India reportedly has more monthly active users than in any other country. Open AI, which has raised around $40 billion in total funding, is burning $1-2 billion each month to attract users by giving services at zero cost. This predatory pricing is encouraged by US policies, which seek to import data and actively export AI.

Apart from user acquisition, companies are using our data to train more superior, closed-source AI models. If India doesn’t develop aatmanirbharta in AI, our future may involve having AI services powered by our own data, but owned by others, and then sold back to us. Instead, we should adopt the best features of global models, let them work within India, but set rules that encourage Indian and foreign investment.