Rising Giant India Presents Itself As AI Counterweight to U.S. and China

The fourth global AI summit marked a decisive shift from focusing on theoretical hazards to spreading AI’s benefits throughout the world.

What’s new: The AI Impact Summit showcased India’s ambition to serve as a counterweight to the United States and China. This year’s gathering of government officials, business leaders, and researchers took place in New Delhi from February 16 to February 20.

How it works: Billed as the first global AI summit to be hosted in the global south, the conference attracted hundreds of thousands of participants and representatives of more than 100 countries. The leaders of India, Brazil, France, Spain, Bolivia, Mauritius and Sri Lanka were in attendance, as well as UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Michael Kratsios, and star CEOs including Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. But one participant reported that “Chinese participation was almost nonexistent,” as the schedule overlapped with Chinese New Year celebrations.

More than 85 countries including the U.S. and China endorsed the New Delhi Declaration on AI Impact, a non-binding agreement to harness AI for economic growth, social good, and shared global benefit rather than narrow national or corporate advantage. The declaration emphasizes seven principles: democratization of AI resources, social empowerment, economic growth and social good, secure and trusted AI, AI for science, nurturing of skills and education, and sustainable AI systems.
In his summit appearance, Prime Minister Nerendra Modi promoted India as a force for affordable technology designed for a diverse audience. Modi touted India’s supply of tech talent, public technology infrastructure, and startup ecosystem (third largest in the world).
Top AI companies expanded their presences in India. Anthropic and OpenAI opened offices in Bengaluru and Mumbai, respectively. OpenAI announced an agreement to use Tata Consultancy Services’ data centers and provide its ChatGPT Enterprise service. Google committed to building an AI hub in the southeastern port city of Visakhapatnam and promised to route additional subsea cables between India, the U.S., and other countries.
Human-rights organizations criticized the summit for failing to address gaps in AI governance. For instance, Amnesty International said that AI in India contributes to “systems of mass surveillance . . . in an already pernicious context of civil rights abuses.” The organization called the summit “largely irrelevant and ineffective at advancing binding rights protections” and called for “regulations for a digitally safe future.”

Behind the news: India is in the spotlight as major AI companies have pledged to invest there and the national government ramps up its own AI spending.

Google has committed $15 billion over five years to establish an artificial intelligence hub. Microsoft will invest $17.5 billion over four years in India’s cloud and AI infrastructure. Amazon plans to spend $35 billion by 2030 to build its business in India.
As the conference opened, India allocated $1.1 billion to fund startups in AI and other high-tech fields.
The government is funding domestic startups to build models that can process its 22 officially recognized languages while running on relatively small processing budgets.

Why it matters: Advancing AI is a global effort, and communication among national governments is an important part. This year’s summit focused on realistic issues like ensuring access to processing and connectivity and encouraging competition in the market — a welcome change from the unrealistic science-fiction worries that dominated the initial event in 2023. This year’s optimistic atmosphere signals that the 2024 and 2025 summits helped attendees recognize AI’s value. At the same time, critics highlighted the ongoing challenge of aligning AI’s rapid build-out with democratic values.

We’re thinking: It’s important that global leaders get together and keep talking. We’re glad to see that the AI summit remains ongoing and governments are aiming to use AI for the benefit of all.