The conversation around building AI in India is finally taking its shape. Sam Altman during his visit to India said that no one would be able to replicate what OpenAI has done with ChatGPT. To which, Tech Mahindra CEO, CP Gurnani said, “Challenge accepted.” It took close to two months to present their goals to the world and launched Project Indus, an indigenous LLM for speaking in many Indic languages.
Most recently, at Reliance’s 46th Annual General Meeting, Mukesh Ambani also announced his plans to build India-specific AI models. The Jio boss is probably one of the persons from India who has the capability of actually challenging OpenAI.
“India has scale. India has data. India has talent. But we also need AI-ready digital infrastructure that can handle AI’s immense computational demands,” said Ambani. Through Jio, Ambani was able to give broadband connectivity to everyone and definitely delivered the promise he made. Now with AI, is it really possible?
A little too late?
Last year, Reliance acquired a 25% stake in Silicon Valley-based Two Platforms, a company focused on advanced technological projects aimed at creating interactive and immersive experiences through AI interactions with a sum of $15 million. The company is also investing in developing up to 2,000 MW of AI-ready computing capacity.
When it comes to capital and investment, there is nothing that is going to stop Ambani from making a comparatively great model. For the talent, Reliance can hire people from across the globe, to some extent even existing leading companies if they wish to. If not that, Ambani can simply outsource it to some other company and build an AI model for India. (Reliance’s AI can also be called AI-JIO)
Arguably, it might be a little late to come up in the AI space. Even with Tech Mahindra’s Project Indus is still in the infancy stage. Moreover, for the project to be successful, Gurnani has said that it requires contributions from every Indian to build the dataset. An Indic language dataset would just be the first step towards building an AI model to compete with ChatGPT. Still the bid is on and the way from here is only upwards.
Emerging stronger
On similar lines, India’s ambition of becoming a semiconductor superpower is still in the making. The government has been investing thousands of crores for the projects, but the delays and inefficiencies in the process have resulted in the loss of one-and-a-half years. To make up for the loss, Semicon India 2023 has given a little hope with all the promising investments and partnerships that Vedanta has promised with a ‘world-class technology partner. Even AMD and Micron are planning to invest in India.
The recent success of Chandrayaan-3 mission has also brought India into the spotlight. Becoming the fourth country to land on the moon, and first to land on the south-pole has been a huge feat for the company. This has also caused countries like Japan to already announce their partnership for the future missions with ISRO.
Elon Musk’s Starlink is also expected to offer satellite services in India. The company has already been in talks with the Indian government for making the process faster. Musk also finds it “impressive” that many of the CEOs of one of the biggest companies in the world are also of Indian-origin.
Meanwhile, no one can deny the success of UPI. The whole world has been trying to replicate its success in as many ways as possible. Countries like France, Australia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Bhutan, Nepal, Oman, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan have already received the UPI technology from India.
So even though it might seem like the step towards building AI systems might be a little late for India, the country has already proven itself as one of the leading countries when it comes to technological advancements, and is striving to do even more. Possibly, AI could be the next step for the country. Further, the country can lead the way for quantum computing soon if IBM comes back to India.
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