Agencies
New York
Early January 2025, Microsoft’s Chairman and CEO Satya Nadela announced a $3 billion investment in India for cloud and AI infrastructure over the next two years. This investment is to complement the acceleration of AI innovation in India by IndiaAI, the Indian government’s artificial intelligence initiative. Such initiatives from both public and private stakeholders are leading to fast evolution in India’s AI landscape.
The world is steadily marching towards an AI economy. The fast-emerging market for AI is revolutionising both the demand and supply of the workforce and India’s influence on the Global economy and governance, particularly that in the Global South. Soon to become the third-largest AI economy, India possesses a comparative advantage in terms of high-skilled human resources, an ambitious cohort of entrepreneurs, as well as digitally empowered public infrastructure and conducive government policies; all these factors are contributing towards a strengthening of AI and its rampant adoption, and its global influence on AI-enabled governance.
These endowments of India position it well to lead Global South in navigating AI adoption, the disruptive innovation it causes, and skill training for workforce preparedness. India through its PPP collaboration and AI mission has laid its focus on developing a "global framework for AI-driven public services and digitally-empowered infrastructure”.
AI’s geo-strategic importance and impact on the economy, governance, and society at large across the globe are well-acknowledged.All sectors, whether health, banking and finance, education, etc., are progressively requiring an AI-ready workforce. The AI market is creating new job opportunities in the field of AI development, implementation, and maintenance and companies are heavily investing in their AI infrastructure. This has led to a rise in demand for AI specialists, data scientists, machine learning engineers, and AI software developers.
Acknowledging the rampantly growing importance of AI, in 2024, Indian government allocated Rs10,300 crore for the IndiaAI Mission to facilitate the development of the AI ecosystem in India, covering various facets of AI, including datasets, computation capacity, skilling, start-ups, and safety. The development of ecosystem also involves the establishment of the IndiaAI Innovation Centre (IAIC), a leading academic institution in AI for ensuring streamlined implementation and retention of top research talent.
Thus, the Indian government’s AI mission aims at harnessing AI’s transformative power, focusing on widespread adoption, consumption, continuous upskilling, and ethical AI development. As a result, IndiaAI signed an MoU with Microsoft for a strategic partnership to drive the adoption and development of artificial intelligence (AI) in India.
The programme targets skilling 500,000 individuals, including students, educators, developers, government officials, and women entrepreneurs, by 2026. It also focuses on trickle down of AI by ensuring rural AI innovation in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. With the latest announcement of a $3 billion investment in AI infrastructure to accelerate the adoption of AI, skilling, and innovation, Microsoft had earlier already launched the ADVANTA(I)GE India initiative with the ambitious goal of training two million people in AI skills by 2025.
In the efforts to build an AI-ready workforce the Indian government has made efforts to update school and college curricula, along with incentivizing R&D. In collaboration with Intel, India’s Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) came up with a handbook on AI-based curriculum, along with skilling material like Facilitator Manual and AI training video. Courses on AI are already being floated for students in senior secondary classes. Now, decisions have been taken to start the AI "Inspire module” for primary classes as well.
Despite global macroeconomic instabilities, emerging AI and generative AI technologies are acceleratingproductivity and creativity for the Indian market, with a potential contribution expected at an additional $675 billion to India’s economy by 2038. As per a report, AI startups in India have become one of the top destinations for investment by venture capitalists, targeting fields including gaming, astrology, and health and other spaces, with focus on hyper-personalised experiences in local languages at affordable prices. With this, India ranked 10th with $1.4 billion private investment in AI in mid-2024.
The Indian initiatives have been guided by three main pillars: inclusive AI innovation, i.e., AI for All (as enshrined in the Indian government’s AI for All programme),accessibility and AI-readiness of the workforce, and reliable AI through risk mitigation and ethical considerations.
India’s membership of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) as one of the representatives of the Global South and its chairmanship of the GPAI is an important platform to steer the global AI narrative and inclusive AI infrastructure, and for developing frameworks for responsible and inclusive AI systems for the Global South. Moreover, the India AI mission is a significant measure in the endeavors of the Global South in fostering technological self-reliance, ethical and responsible AI deployment, and democratization of the benefits of AI across allnations.
Expanding India’s AI economy has both inward and outward-looking orientation, with the objective of minimising the cost of AI innovation and adoption and also mitigating the negative externalities and perversions associated with AI. The challenge is, which India also recognizes well, a classic trade-off between efficiency and equity in anAI-led economy.
The task is twofold: One, to create more winners than losers in the process of disruptive innovation; Second, to ensure that the displaced workforce gets smoothly inducted back into the economy through continuous upskilling. As a result, India is concentrating on skilling to ensure an AI-ready workforce across all strata of society. Thus, the objective is to strike a balance, ensuring efficiency along with equity, notwithstanding the situation of choosing one over the other.
And this objective expands at the global level, where through platforms like G20 and GPAI, India is ensuring a level-playing field in terms responsible development and use of AI, grounded in human rights, inclusion, diversity, innovation, and economic growth, focusing on the special needs of the Global South.