As governments continue to debate the risks of artificial intelligence — from existential threats to job disruption and child safety — India is attempting to reframe the global conversation. Rather than centering primarily on long‑term systemic dangers, New Delhi is emphasizing implementation, governance at scale, and measurable public impact.

This week’s AI Impact Summit in New Delhi reflects that shift. The five‑day gathering, inaugurated today by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, brings together heads of state, technology executives, and international organizations at a moment when AI systems are reshaping economies, labor markets, and security architectures. With around 250,000 visitors expected and dozens of high‑level delegations in attendance, the summit is being presented as the largest edition yet — and as a platform to outline a shared roadmap for global AI governance and cooperation.

In a message ahead of the summit, Modi described the event as evidence that India is progressing rapidly in science and technology and as a showcase of the capabilities of its younger generations. But beyond symbolism, the summit signals a broader repositioning: India seeks to be seen not only as a technology market or outsourcing hub, but as a norm‑shaping actor in the emerging AI order.

New Delhi has backed this ambition with an active diplomatic campaign. Twenty-seven Indian ambassadors and consuls across multiple regions — including Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Gulf, and Israel — have published op‑eds and public interventions promoting India’s narrative of responsible, inclusive, impact‑driven AI. The message is clear: India aims to position itself as a bridge between advanced economies and the Global South, particularly in reducing the digital divide and expanding access to AI infrastructure.

The timing is significant. The AI summit cycle, previously hosted by the United Kingdom, France, and South Korea, initially focused on the safety of frontier systems. Over time, however, the agenda has expanded to include economic disruption, geopolitical competition, and the governance of rapidly diffusing technologies. India’s edition leans decisively toward the question of how AI can be operationalized at scale while remaining anchored in public value.

New Delhi’s framing rests on three guiding principles — People, Planet, and Progress — sometimes described domestically as the “three sutras,” meaning core principles. The emphasis is not merely rhetorical. Indian policymakers increasingly describe artificial intelligence as cross‑sector public infrastructure, spanning healthcare, agriculture, education, climate modeling, and public administration. In this view, AI is not just an industry but a capacity layer for the state.

The summit’s agenda reflects this orientation. Structured around themes such as human capital, inclusion, safe and trusted AI, resilience, science, democratization of resources, and AI for social good, it underscores that technological systems function only when skills, trust, compute access, and institutional capacity evolve together. Governance, in this perspective, is not a constraint on innovation but a structural component of it.

One recurring concept is that of “frugal AI” — systems designed to operate in resource‑constrained environments. Rather than prioritising ever-larger models as a marker of technological prestige, the focus shifts to reliability, affordability, and scalability. The goal is to ensure that AI tools can function in diverse linguistic, infrastructural, and socioeconomic contexts, extending benefits beyond digitally privileged populations.

This approach is also tied to strategic autonomy. India is investing across the full AI stack, from sovereign models to compute infrastructure and energy capacity, viewing this integrated architecture as essential for resilience. Indigenous, open, mid‑sized models trained on local languages and use cases are intended to reduce dependence on a small number of global platforms. The ambition is to develop a broad multilingual and multimodal model ecosystem, supported by smaller specialized systems, while fostering transparency and public‑sector deployment.

For European policymakers, the Indian experiment introduces a complementary dimension to ongoing debates. The European Union has emerged as a regulatory leader, emphasizing rights‑based governance and ethical standards. India’s contribution lies more in implementation at scale — in how to operationalise AI across large, diverse populations without losing sight of institutional accountability. Linking regulatory robustness with deployment capacity could strengthen, rather than fragment, global governance.

The relevance extends beyond Europe. For countries like Israel — a global AI innovator navigating both security imperatives and regulatory debates — India’s trajectory offers an alternative model: one that pairs technological ambition with large‑scale public deployment. It suggests that AI legitimacy may ultimately hinge less on abstract principles and more on whether citizens perceive tangible improvements in services, opportunity, and institutional effectiveness.

Legitimacy is a recurring theme in Indian diplomatic messaging. Writing earlier this month, India’s ambassador to Italy, Vani Rao, argued that: “India’s emphasis on people, planet, and progress offers a response to this challenge. By grounding its AI strategy in real-world use, institutional capacity, and long-term infrastructure, it demonstrates how technological ambition can be aligned with societal benefit.”

A similar emphasis on access and democratization has been articulated by Ambassador J.P. Singh, who noted that “India is working to democratize access to AI infrastructure by developing cloud-based GPU resources and low-cost compute power, particularly for startups and researchers,” highlighting the intent to broaden computational capacity and foster a more inclusive innovation ecosystem.

Ultimately, India’s reframing of the AI debate is as political as it is technological. Artificial intelligence is treated not as an end in itself, nor solely as a source of systemic risk, but as a governance choice about how societies distribute opportunity and manage transformation. As Modi stated ahead of the summit, the guiding theme is “Sarvajana Hitaya, Sarvajana Sukhaya” — welfare for all, happiness for all.

Whether this model will succeed in reconciling scale, innovation, and accountability remains to be seen. But by shifting the emphasis from fear to deployment, and from frontier risk to public infrastructure, India is positioning itself as an increasingly consequential actor in shaping the global AI order.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)