Rahul Gandhi's men going shirtless only demonstrated bad taste and frustration.
The Modi Govt scored a key diplomatic victory.
The AI Impact Summit concluded here with the adoption of the New Delhi Declaration marking the success of the push by India and other countries in the Global South to frame artificial intelligence as a shared global good rather than an exclusive technological advantage of the rich and developed.
Endorsed by 86 countries and two organisations, the declaration sets out a shared global vision for what it calls "collaborative, trusted, resilient and efficient" artificial intelligence, whose potential can be realised "only when its benefits are shared by humanity".
It pointed out that "the choices that we make today will shape the AI-enabled world that future generations will inherit".
Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented India as a hub for affordable and scalable artificial intelligence, saying innovations developed in the South Asian nation could be deployed globally.
“Design and develop in India. Deliver to the world, deliver to humanity,” the Indian leader said during his keynote address at an AI summit in New Delhi.
Members of the Indian Youth Congress staged a ‘shirtless’ protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the India AI Impact Summit. The protestors accused the Prime Minister of compromising national interests at the summit. At least 4 protesters were detained by Delhi Police, and legal action has been initiated.
Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera had also targeted Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, and a sharp political attack had been mounted.
The BJP responded strongly, condemning the protest as an attempt to disrupt an international event. An apology had been demanded from the Congress, and the actions of the Youth Congress had been described as anti-India and inappropriate at a global platform.
India celebrates 80 years of independence from the UK in August 2027. At about that same moment, “early versions of true super intelligence” could emerge, Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, said.
It’s a looming coincidence that raised a charged question at the AI Impact summit in Delhi, hosted by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi: can India avoid returning to the status of a vassal state when it imports AI to raise the prospects of its 1.4 billion people?
Modi’s hunger to harness AI’s capability is great. He compared it on Thursday to a turning point that resets the direction of civilisation, such as “when the first sparks were struck from stone”.
The most common analogy heard among the thousands of visitors to the summit was the dawn of electricity, but Modi was talking about fire.
Getty image/ The Guardian
His desire to use AI to supercharge Indian economic growth is matched by that of the big US tech companies. OpenAI, Google and Anthropic all played prominent roles at the summit, announcin7g deals to get ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude AIs into more people’s hands.
The Trump administration, seeing AI as central to its battle for supremacy with China, was clearing the path for the three AI companies. The US government signed the Pax Silica, a technology agreement that binds India closer to US tech and away from Beijing.
India lacks the semiconductors, power plants and vast gigawatt datacentres to go it alone. In common with most other countries, it faces a choice between US and Chinese AI models. Which they choose could have profound consequences for who controls India’s future, because if AI’s power emerges as predicted, it will not only tweak economic and social structures, but become their new bedrock.
Stuart Russell, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley, who closely follows India’s progress, said: “If we get to AGI [artificial general intelligence], AI is going to be producing 80% of the global economy. All manufacturing, most agriculture, all services will be just done; managed by AI, produced by AI.”
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