AI is taking a K-shaped path that opens up opportunities for India

We should focus on cost-efficient AI that democratizes access and offers population-scale solutions

- JASPREET BINDRA

There have been two pivotal moments in the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) in the last three years: the ChatGPT moment in November 2022 that jump-started the AI age and the DeepSeek moment this January which upended the narrative of high costs and centralized AI, replacing it with a story of lower costs and better democratized AI.

While doubts around DeepSeek's unbelievably low cost of $5.6 million have only grown, it is still pivotal for two reasons: an open-source model is almost as good as a proprietary one, and Chinese large language models (LLMs) are as good as US ones.

While US tech stocks, especially Nvidia's, tanked the week after, investors have kept their faith in US Big Tech firms that have announced around $350 billion of AI capex just this year, even as OpenAI and SoftBank double down on America's $500 billion Stargate project. So, what will happen to AI foundational models, and where will India be in this game?

These models seem to be following a K-curve. Economists spoke of a K-shaped economic recovery after the covid pandemic: an uneven revival of the economy with different sectors, industries or groups of people on different trajectories, some moving up while others fared badly.