New Delhi brought together tens of thousands of delegates at a global summit on artificial intelligence. With the presence of leaders like Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Emmanuel Macron, India projected its ambition to influence the governance of this technology. Although its industry does not develop cutting-edge models, the event sought to position the country as the spokesperson for the Global South in discussions on the development and deployment of AI.
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The event served to promote the local startup ecosystem, but India's position in the AI race is modest. It does not have players that develop foundational models on par with OpenAI or Google. Its strategic goal is to center the debate on impacts for developing economies and move it away from the focus on existential risks that dominated the Bletchley and South Korea summits.
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It is curious to see how a summit that warned about the excessive influence of big tech on regulation had the CEOs of those same companies as main stars. It's like inviting the wolves to design the corral fence, but with vests and speeches about human-centered AI. New Delhi, for its part, got its family photo at the center of the digital world.