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In an exclusive interview following the Grand AI India Impact Summit, Abhishek Singh, CEO of India’s Mission AI, discusses the nation's emerging role in the global artificial intelligence landscape.
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00:09that's right the grand AI India impact summit has come to a conclusion here in
00:15the national capital and over the past few days artificial intelligence has
00:20suddenly become a buzzword and dominated the national conversation major global
00:25tech leaders have promised to participate with billions of dollars in
00:29the India AI dream Prime Minister Modi has unveiled a road map for artificial
00:33intelligence but there have been skeptics to who have said that this was
00:37more about optics than substance often questioning the planning of such a make
00:42mega event also wondering whether India is too far behind the US and China in the
00:48AI race who better to answer some of these questions then the man who's really
00:53driven this AI summit or one of the key men in the hot seat I'm joined by a
00:59Abhishek Singh he is the CEO of India's mission AI he's had a tough for five days
01:04first of all Abhishek I'm sure you're breathing a sigh of relief that it's
01:08almost over it has been quite an event just in terms of the size and therefore
01:14I think you deserve a lot of commendation for having achieved that scale of the
01:19event what are your three big takeaways from all the conversations that have
01:24happened over the last five days Abhishek thank you thank you Rajdeep and I must
01:29say that it had been a stupendous effort by by the team that ensured that we
01:33pulled off at such a major global event at this scale so as far as takeaways are
01:38concerned like number one it puts India at the AI stage the whole India has
01:41noticed the the talent that we have the capacity that we have a building may
01:45building models building AI applications use cases our ability to be to
01:50operate at all all layers of the AI stack so first takeaway I would say that
01:55putting India and the AI map showing what we are capable of and what we can do
01:59number two I would say that is this is like the in many ways this is like the
02:02digital India moment of 2015 where in AI has been kind of become the go-to thing
02:08by for all all youngsters and startups I believe that that the interest that youth
02:13have shown especially college students and school students and the amount of
02:17time they step into the startups who were showcasing the best of the solutions this
02:21will inspire them to learn about AI to understand that to understand why it is
02:25important for their future and this will lead to a revolution like never before
02:30number third takeaway I would say that the kind of investments it will drive in
02:35our AI economy especially the global majors looking at not only investing in in data
02:40centers and in AI compute in India but also investing in Indian companies Indian
02:46talent Indian startups which will ensure that we will ultimately think of
02:51starting to build IP in India but for long what has happened is that talent has
02:54been exported from India to the US and the same VCs have funded Indians in the US
02:59and they set up companies and create IP there instead of that this will turn the
03:03clock around and ensure that we will be starting to build impactful companies
03:07within India which will lead to a lot of benefits in the days to come
03:16I'm going to come to each of those takeaways I find them fascinating and I'll
03:19come to them in a moment but I'm I would be remiss in not asking you did the
03:24organizers are faced and you whether you read social media or not I don't know but
03:28there was a lot of flack on social media particularly over day one over
03:32organization there was also the entire fiasco over a Galgothia robo dog and how
03:38that was allowed to to pass through your diligent systems how do you respond to
03:43those who say that the festival tried to become too big too soon and thereby optics
03:49took over substance there wasn't enough time to actually have those serious
03:53dialogues that were needed how would you respond to those who say optics took over
03:57substance and it could have been planned and organized better I would reverse it
04:03around and say that maybe we did focus too much on optics and we focused more on
04:07substance the quality of sessions that we had was fabulous and we did spend a lot of
04:11time in curating those sessions and getting the right people to come to India
04:15and speak around the sessions what we didn't anticipate maybe was that on day
04:19one we'll have as much crowd as we got because day one was supposed to be a light
04:23day the expo was not open the expo was opening only on the in the evening of of
04:2916th at 5 p.m. and on the prime minister inaugurating it but somehow people came in the
04:34morning thinking that the expo is open so the numbers that we are anticipating we got for all
04:39the session the bharat mandam's capacity is to take almost five to six thousand people
04:43only and those were registered we wanted we were expecting them only to come but we
04:47did get almost 60 to 70 thousand people and since the expo was not open that day
04:51expo was supposed to be open on from 17th onwards it led to some commotion and some bad social
04:58media feedback that we got but what I strongly believe is that the the if you look at the
05:04videos of even on the day one the sessions were like populated like crazy every room was filled
05:10the discussions were very intense so so that is the proof that it was not optics or substance
05:15had it been optics we would have focused only on logistics and ensuring that people get in
05:19number two about the galgotia incident the less said the better it's not that we were we were
05:23showcasing and only an Indian product exhibition there were multiple companies who were showcasing
05:28products from all over the world so but the mistake that these fellows did was that they claimed
05:33that product to be they made by them so that was a wrong take by by the concerned uh uh
05:41person who
05:41spoke to the media without understanding and I believe because of that the the expo organizers did
05:48cancel their stall allotment and they were removed
05:54so could there have been better due diligence there I I come back to it uh you know you're you're
05:59blaming
06:00galgotias I I'm sorry I just want to focus for a minute on that because let's get this out of
06:04the way
06:04you're saying on day one the organization may have been caught off guard because of just the sheer
06:10size and enthusiasm of audiences and the galgotia instance is a one-off it shouldn't take away
06:16presumably from all the other wonderful innovative startups and that the fault was that they were
06:21selling uh the robo dog as their own product am I broadly correct and that was not told to you
06:27or whoever was was in charge of the expo see like it's very difficult to do due diligence with regard
06:34to what people may say when a media when they're giving a media bite this this is like if we
06:40don't
06:40we don't even have that level of either human intelligence or artificial intelligence to predict
06:44what somebody will say to a media journalist on a tv interview if they say something which is
06:48factually wrong and misleading then there's little that the we could do in advance if somebody has a
06:54product like that I will be happy to learn how it is made and how it is done so that
06:58was so the
06:59galgotia instead is about that only it was more about the wrong claim that was made the misleading
07:02claim that was made rather than what was exhibited so that's one yeah
07:11let's turn from there to the more positive sides that that's the negative which captured the
07:16headlines and the media often focuses on what captures the headlines but the launch pad you
07:21mentioned this as one of your takeaways about indigenous AI models the prime minister has
07:25spoken about making India in a way possibly the third poll after the US and China you have indigenous
07:32AI models coming out there like the Sarabham model do you believe these models now can compete with the
07:38best of what the American and the Chinese are offering or are we still playing catch-up do you believe
07:44that this summit in a way is showcasing what India can do but are we still playing catch-up to
07:50the big two
07:51see like Sarabham models 105 billion model parameter model that they released has been
07:56published on hugging face and against many benchmarks they are performing better than many of the
08:01models that the West or China has produced so while it is true that we are behind US and China
08:06but we are
08:07catching up and we are catching up fast and maybe very soon we'll be leapfrogging to get ahead but we
08:12should claim that only when we have done that what we are doing is that we are providing as government
08:16we are providing all necessary support to the ecosystem to the researchers to the startups
08:21to industry who are the ones who will make the models in fact in anywhere else in the world
08:25these initiatives are done by the private sector are done by startups and done by researchers
08:29so the role of the government is to provide an enabling environment and all necessary
08:33inputs that is required to build such solutions and the government is doing that and we have seen
08:38what Sarabham has done and Bharat Jan has done or Socket has done or Gyani has done and in the
08:43pipeline
08:43there are 10 to 12 more startups who are building similar impactful solutions in fact even in the
08:49field of small language model Shodayai is building a material science model physics model we have
08:55IntelliHealth which is building a medical solution for diagnosing epilepsy and Alzheimer's so there are
09:00many more initiatives which are currently being done which will ensure that that we will be able to
09:06not only catch up but maybe leapfrogged to go ahead go ahead
09:13you're using the word leapfrog so are you saying that this gap that exists today because there's a huge
09:18gap you will well know in terms of investments in terms of just where the foundational models that the
09:23US and China have said compared to India you believe that this gap can be bridged is this the
09:27next big challenge in a way for you yes you've organized the summit yes there's been a lot of
09:32attention as I said it's been part of the national conversation it's put AI on the at least squarely on
09:38the
09:38national dialogue in a way but once now that the summit is over how do you take this forward
09:43isn't that the next big challenge to ensure that that level of innovation investments take place
09:48or will we end up piggybacking on the American foundation models because I heard some of the
09:53American speakers at the summit saying that the American stack is what will drive the world forward
10:01see like again I'd like to clarify that we are not in this game of of competing and trying to
10:07go
10:08forward that's not our objective our objective is to build something for India build something that
10:13works in Indian languages build something that solves issues that we have in delivery of health care
10:19services or services of farmers or educational services so we are trying to solve problems that we
10:26have in India trying to improve service delivery trying to bring in efficiency productivity by using
10:31AI in every sector in the process if we go if we are able to our solutions become better than
10:36any other
10:37countries let that be but that's not the only objective the objective is to try to enable building
10:43solutions in India that work for India and ultimately these solutions will be something the whole world will
10:48look at we have done that in the case of digital public infrastructure in fact when we are building the
10:52identity stack and we are building the UPI and digital payments or the digi locker we were not
10:57looking at which whether any country has it or not we are building it for India we are building
11:01solutions that we need and maybe later the global south and other countries adopted it in fact in the
11:06case of UPI you have seen even countries like Brazil and France are looking at it so not only the
11:11developing world but the developed world also looks at our solutions similarly the way we build AI
11:15what Prime Minister spoke about yesterday about the Manow approach towards building human-centric AI
11:21using AI for solving issues that humans face and bettering the lives of people in a very responsible
11:28manner that's our approach and if and the way it's shaping up ultimately it will become an example for
11:33the whole world
11:38no no but can you can you just very quickly you know tell me how will Manow translate into reality
11:44find words used that you want a moral and ethical inclusive accessible AI system but there are legitimate
11:50fears that people have that AI will actually widen the divide even Sundar Pichai spoke about it and AI
11:56divide could emerge between the haves and the have-nots how much of these fine words is going to be
12:01translated into action on the ground in terms of making AI for example truly inclusive and accessible
12:06at least in the short term or is there a genuine fear of job losses see like the way we
12:13are building
12:14and the way we are trying to make AI inclusive is like if you look at a project like Bhashini
12:17which is one of the
12:18projects that we launched as part of AI that was primarily to ensure that we use AI we use natural
12:23language
12:23processing to ensure all languages are covered the models that the West makes they make in English they are trained
12:30on
12:30English data sets they are trained on on data sets that that's not contextual they do not capture our nuances
12:36our cultural nuances our
12:38our traditions our our national ethos that is not captured there so what we are trying to do is that
12:46we are
12:47trying to build data sets in all Indian languages we are trying to digitize our own context and the models
12:52which are trained by default in Indian languages they will definitely perform better than any other model when you cut
12:58to
12:59comes to multilingual context so that's the way we are trying to address to ensure inclusion is ensured as far
13:05as job losses are concerned
13:06whenever a new technology comes in some jobs do get obsolete but new jobs are created how do you how
13:12do you take that
13:13opportunity how do you do skilling how do you do reskilling how do you orient your curriculum how do you
13:18train people
13:19and India has a whole potential of becoming the key AI transformation services provider for the whole world the whole
13:26world
13:26will need agentic AI the whole world will need physical AI the whole world will need AJI applications and the
13:33forward
13:33deployment engineers that are in great demand so the whole world looks at India as providing the workforce
13:38that is needed for building AI applications so we actually I look at it as a big opportunity of moving
13:44up the value chain from being mere coders where people can become AI transformation engineers and forward
13:50deployment engineers which will be much much more rewarding for each individual and also for the nation's economy
13:59you know today one of the big stories Abhishek Singh was the signing up of Pax Silica a US-led
14:06strategic
14:06alliance of which India has become part of many believe that this will in a way is directed against China
14:13but will it our signing up to Pax Silica does that make us more dependent on the US in a
14:21way particularly for
14:22technology particularly for the kind of partnerships that are already being built by Indian startups with
14:29the Nvidia's and the open AI's of the world I ask you again are we really in a position to
14:35to become a third
14:38pole in this AI world around us or is the US going to are we only going to have to
14:45do partnerships with
14:46the US at least in the short run see the global supply chain in semiconductors in in chips in AI
14:54artificial intelligence deep tech is such that there are dependencies that every country has
14:59in fact Nvidia will not be Nvidia without what ASMC does so it's not that any country works on its
15:05own
15:05there are there are partnerships there are there are understandings and and people work with trust when
15:14it comes to technology so partnership between India and US is based on trust our strength remains talent
15:20as of now US strength is technology and between this technology and talent we get trust what we
15:26are doing is that yes till such time we don't we design our own chips and we do have the
15:31capability of
15:32designing our own AI compute chips because the entire design engineers look at chip design engineers
15:37most of them come from India so the DLI scheme and the efforts that are going on I strongly believe
15:42that in the next three to five years we'll have a chip that is designed totally in India and then
15:47within a few years we'll be able to tape out those chips and then again we'll become like kind of
15:53self-sufficient over the entire AI stack but at the moment yes every country is dependent on some other
15:59country for some other needs our engineers contribute to designing of this chip our engineers contribute to
16:04most of these models our engineers do contribute to building AI applications and similarly the US has the
16:09talent technology which they offer to us for building impactful solutions
16:18my final question I know you've had very long five days and you ended it with a dance or a
16:23song
16:23performance with the Naga band there because you are an IS officer from Nagaland your original
16:29Cader parent Cader in a way you've had this long five days that you've had to go through if there
16:35is
16:35one thing you had to do differently what would you do I again come back to some of the criticism
16:40there was too many BVIP movements the traffic was not as regulated people didn't have water
16:47they had to wait in long queues would you have done anything differently to reduce some of the
16:53criticism and only focus on the many the many gains from the AI summit if there was one thing you
17:00had to do differently was what would that be see any such event whether you go to Davos or whether
17:07you go to the CES at Vegas any major global event where you get heads of state where you get
17:14the top
17:15CEOs of all companies where there's a lot of traction where hundreds of thousands of people turn up there
17:21will be traffic because the roads are not designed for handling hundred thousand people on daily basis
17:25so if you go to Disney World there is traffic so traffic issues are normal traffic issues everyone battles
17:30that's not a problem that's that's not a challenge if you're doing a even of the scale with regard to
17:35other
17:36facilities I don't think there was any shortage of water or food of any kind in fact most people have
17:41appreciated that this was a zero waste summit there was not a speck of garbage or a thrown water bottle
17:47that
17:47was seen anywhere in the in the whole premises if I were to do differently maybe we should separate out
17:53the
17:53business days and public days because what happens is that given the kind of world leaders they were
17:58there I would have actually wanted to have some free time for them to interact with our younger
18:02startups with the crowds that we have unfortunately we we do have a large number of people and sometimes
18:09we do get very close to each other which sometimes is culturally not acceptable to many other parts
18:15so maybe we need to we will if we do next time maybe we'll have a business day separately which
18:20will be
18:20exclusive for business leaders and tech leaders so that meaningful interaction discussions networking
18:25could happen and the public days wherein we get the citizens who also come in join in students and
18:31other stakeholders that can follow so maybe that way but what we also wanted was that to truly
18:37democratize this right summit because we because had we done that it would have been called as an elite
18:42event not open to all but yes criticism comes in whichever way you do but as long as the larger
18:48objective of ensuring that the AI moment for India has come we have been able to achieve that
18:58Abhishek Singh I I really appreciate you joining us I know you've had a rough five days and you've
19:02really been there at the center of it all and but to explain and speak about the gains and the
19:08controversies that's very rare but that's why you're the CEO of AI Mission India I appreciate you and I
19:15thank you for joining me and sparing the time on the news today thank you so much
19:20Abhishek Singh thank you the man of the moment in a way
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