India's AI conversation needs to be grounded in reality—neither brochure-like optimism that promises everything will magically improve overnight and catapult India to superpower status nor incurable pessimism that sees only doom and job losses. What is required is a clear-eyed discussion on what can realistically be achieved, especially in AI-driven healthcare where lives are at stake.

The conversations at the India AI Impact Summit in Delhi this week were revealing. Alongside the buzz around innovation, one heard words like “ethics”, “localisation”, and “trust”. These will be central to India’s AI story in the days ahead. There are lessons from elsewhere in Asia.

Think back to IBM Watson for Oncology, introduced as a groundbreaking AI solution for cancer diagnosis and treatment. In 2012, IBM partnered with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York to train AI to make treatment recommendations. A few years later, top hospitals in Thailand, India, and South Korea signed adoption agreements, drawn by the promise of bringing world-class cancer care to their patients.

Watson’s mission was to export a Manhattan “Gold Standard” by digitising the institutional memory of Memorial Sloan Kettering. The idea was noble—to democratise the expertise of its oncologists and provide a decision support system for institutions like Manipal Hospitals in India, Bumrungrad International in Thailand, and Gachon University in South Korea.

Yet, it did not quite work as intended. By........

© Free Press Journal