India's Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, on Wednesday issued a sharp counter to comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos, suggesting that India belongs to a "second grouping" of global artificial intelligence (AI) powers.
The remark was at a discussion in which political scientist Ian Bremmer referenced IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva's characterisation of India as a secondary player in the AI race, alongside her view that countries outside the top tier must navigate alignments with the United States or China.
Responding to Bremmer, Vaishnaw insisted that India is "clearly in the first group" of AI nations. He detailed India's progress across what he described as the five layers of AI architecture: the application layer, model layer, chip layer, infrastructure layer, and energy layer. According to him, India is making 'very good progress' across all five layers.
Vaishnaw pressed the scale of India's strength in AI applications and services, predicting that the country would become the world's largest supplier of enterprise-level AI solutions. He argued that the true return on investment in AI comes not from building massive foundational models alone but from embedding AI into business operations. “95% of the work can happen with models that have 20 billion or 50 billion parameters. We are creating a bouquet of such models and already have bouquets of such models which are now being deployed in multiple sectors to increase the productivity, to increase the efficiency, he stated.
Countering the IMF chief's alleged classification, Vaishnaw cited Stanford University's assessments, which place India third in AI penetration and preparedness, and second in AI talent globally. "I don't know what the IMF criteria have been, but Stanford places India as third in terms of AI penetration, in terms of AI preparedness, and in terms of AI talent. All three, actually, on AI talent, it is number two. So I don't think your classification in the second book is right. It's actually in the first," concluded Vaishnaw.
Watch LIVE TV, Get Stock Market Updates, Top Business, IPO and Latest News on NDTV Profit.
