India uniquely positioned in global AI race, says Amitabh Kant

Former G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant states India's demographic strength and tech ambition give it a unique edge in the global AI race. He emphasizes leveraging talent, skills, and computing power to build an equitable, sustainable AI ecosystem.

India's demographic strength and technological ambition position it uniquely in the global artificial intelligence (AI) race, said Amitabh Kant, Former G20 Sherpa of India, while speaking to ANI on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit 2026.

Highlighting the country's youthful energy and vibrancy, Kant said the massive interest among young Indians in AI reflects the transformative potential of the technology. "India has tremendous energy, great vibrancy, huge, huge number of young people," Kant said. "This very powerful technology will change fundamentally the way we live and the way we will grow and evolve."

Key Priorities for India's AI Journey

He added that India must leverage AI to build a more equal society and reach its people. Kant emphasized that talent, skill development and computing power will be central to India's AI journey. "Talent, skill, computing power are all very important," he said.

At the same time, he stressed the importance of driving AI growth sustainably. "It's very important that we drive this technology with renewable energy... in a manner where we can ensure that it's for the good of the humanity as we move forward," he said. Affordability, accountability and multilingual accessibility must remain key priorities to ensure AI benefits every Indian, noting the need to make it "accessible to every single Indian."

AI's Impact on the Job Market

Addressing concerns about job losses due to automation, Kant dismissed fears of large-scale unemployment. "No technology ever leads to lost jobs. It creates new jobs, but of a different kind," he said.

He argued that AI would generate new and higher-quality employment opportunities, adding, "You'll require more data scientists. You'll require more machine learners." He underlined the need to alter course curriculums to prepare the workforce for emerging roles.

Leveraging Foundational Strengths for Global Leadership

On India's global standing, Kant asserted that the country has the foundational strengths required to lead in AI, citing abundant talent, vast datasets and growing computing capacity. "India has all the talent. Without talent, you can't drive AI. India has a lot of data sets. India is putting out, through AI course, a lot of data to its startups and researchers. It's providing computing powers. Large language models are being built, like Sarvam has done, in multilingual. And I think uh it's very, very important that we use this still talent, own data and our own computing power to build very Indian specific large language models. And once they are built, we need to refine them with our own data, use more and more data on Indian large language models so that they become very sophisticated in their use," he said.

The India-AI Impact Summit 2026 aims to foster dialogue on responsible AI governance, innovation ecosystems, digital public infrastructure, climate-conscious technology and equitable access to emerging technologies. (ANI)

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Asianet Newsable English staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)