India must lead Al on its own terms

The competition will not be won by those who build the largest models, but by those who design intelligence that works under real-world constraints and solve consequential problems. This is where India’s strengths lie

- Vivek Wadhwa

India must solve for inclusion, affordability, and resilience. Its advantage lies in building systems that work for 1.4 billion people.

(PTI)

As global leaders gather at the Al summit in Delhi, the familiar script plays out yet again: The US versus China, trillion-dollar valuations, compute races, and speculation about machines that may one day rival human intelligence. India appears in this narrative, but usually in a supporting role. It is described as a large market, a vast engineering workforce, and a services hub, rarely as a country that will shape the architecture of Artificial Intelligence (AI) itself. That framing reflects a hierarchy and level of arrogance that places Silicon Valley and Beijing at the centre of technological destiny and treats everyone else as peripheral.

Over the past three years, Silicon Valley has delivered a steady stream of grand AI pronouncements: AI will replace most human jobs within a decade; it will achieve general intelligence; it poses existential risks if not tightly controlled. And now, according to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the constraint may not be algorithms or talent but electricity itself. Schmidt has argued that the US may need roughly 92 gigawatts of additional power to sustain AI’s trajectory, the equivalent of about 60 nuclear power plants.

That projection is framed as proof of scale and inevitability, but it also carries a subtle message: Only those who can marshal nuclear-scale power grids and limitless capital truly belong in the AI race. For a country like India, still balancing development priorities and energy transitions, the suggestion is that the decisive moves are being made elsewhere.