India Gate, New Delhi, Saakshi Yadav for Pexels.
I am in India. Hot-off the Paris AI Summit and India Energy Week, three interconnected themes have featured prominently in Indian media and national discourse this week: Artificial Intelligence (AI), renewable energy, and India's evolving role in the international arena. India is seeking to use its strengths in renewable energy and its growing technological capacity in AI to solidify its global influence. Security concerns, including in the cyber domain, are further fuelling AI development and partnerships.
India's investments in digital infrastructure, renewable energy, and global diplomacy are building confidence in its capacity to advance technology and energy security, and navigate geopolitical shifts. Indian newspapers' extensive foreign policy coverage fosters strong engagement with global affairs among policymakers, business leaders, and citizens. Conversations I had revealed widespread approval of New Delhi’s G20 hosting in 2023 and a consensus on India’s growing global influence.
Despite facing economic challenges and a strengthened opposition, Narendra Modi secured a rare third term as India’s prime minister last year, albeit by a narrow majority. Commentators have observed Mr. Modi’s “resilience”, noting his “rare ability to withstand setbacks and grow even stronger”. His co-hosting of the Paris AI Summit is seen as evidence of this quality, and a willingness to use this personal resilience to catapult India to a position of stronger global power too. Fresh off a historical victory in the Delhi legislature, were a national election held today, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would now reportedly win a majority on its own.
India's co-chairing of the Paris AI Summit is viewed as a significant accomplishment. It is broadly seen as a major and deserved success for Mr. Modi and for India, signalling both India's technological strengths and its recognition on the global stage. The story of the transformative effect of the "India stack" (government-backed APIs upon which third parties can build software with access to government IDs, payment networks and data) on more than 1 billion Indians was heavily promoted during India's G20 and may have bolstered this recognition. The AI summit further demonstrates the skill of Indian policy and business leaders at engaging key international fora both to image-build and unlock technology-focused alliances.
Defence and security are core motivators for developing AI strengths and partnerships. China and Pakistan are primary concerns. There is recognition that quantum, hypersonic weapons, and lasers and directed energy are creating new vulnerabilities, and require novel capabilities. Against a background of promised defence reforms, policy voices have also made the case this month that India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD), under the auspices of its Defence Artificial Intelligence Projects Agency (DAIPA), with the Indian Armed Forces, should create Indic-language defence LLMs for use across a range of non-battlefield applications. The government has also acknowledged that the expansion of digital infrastructure has led to a rise in cyber attacks, with AI viewed also as crucial for detecting fraud and mitigating growing cyber vulnerabilities.
Regardless of specific applications, there is a broad sense that India should be an AI heavy-weight, either rivalling global AI leaders or serving as their partner of choice. The genuine novelty of India’s digital infrastructure when compared to other models is a source of self-confidence and inspiration in developing AI. Although riddled with controversies over data protection, competition, and exclusion, advocates argue that the India stack represents a superior online model to others in terms of scalability and regulation—fairer than the US’s and more innovative than the EU’s, while beating China’s on transparency. Why not, then, bring this creativity and scale to AI? It could also serve as a foundation layer for AI use cases, in health, public services, energy, and more, as developers build on top of the digital pubic infrastructure.
Beyond domestic needs, the potential to create an ecosystem of countries that buy Indian AI has caught the attention of policymakers and firms alike—just as aspects of India’s digital infrastructure have been exported to other countries, particularly in the global south.
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