Explained : India’s AI Summit Could Prove to be New Delhi’s Lost Opportunity and Its Impact

Amber Sinha is a contributing editor at Tech Policy Press.

A year ago, after the Paris AI Summit, I wrote that the structure, focus, and even the nomenclature of that event clearly telegraphed an intentional and significant shift from safety and regulation toward innovation and the utilization of AI. As I witness the grand spectacle that is India AI Impact Summit this week in New Delhi, this shift has reached its logical conclusion. A cursory comparison of the program and public language of the Paris and New Delhi iterations of this series of events that started in Bletchley Park in 2023 may suggest a sea-change — the use of Sanskrit phrases, the focus on ‘democratization’ of AI and the fact this is the first time a Majority World nation is hosting this event.

However, if you look closer, it becomes evident that both France and India have approached these summits as trade events with one clear economic objective outweighing all others — to seek private sector investment into domestic AI projects. The primary goal is not to gather the best minds to think about the broader social and geopolitical implications of AI, but to create a venue for governments and corporations to announce new ventures and pursue new partnerships. To that end, the summit is already a big success for India, with several large investments already announced, and over $200 billion more expected over the next two years.

But what of the broader social and political goals that many hoped would rise to the fore? Amid the dollar signs and demos, the opportunity to shift the global debate about AI and what world we are building appears to be a lost opportunity.

‘Democratizing’ AI as convenient posturing

An analysis by the Internet Freedom Foundation of the events that are part of the official summit program, as well as the myriad side events, shows that the organizers’ supposed focus on ‘democratization’ did not translate into more space and visibility for issues like rights, privacy, non-discrimination, equity and value distribution or inclusion that are perhaps most central to ensuring that the adoption and deployment of AI is rights-respecting, consistent with democratic values, and in the public interest.

Despite a heavily industry-driven agenda, with relatively less civil-society participation and little scope for meaningful conversations on the harms of the technology and best approaches to regulation, the framing of ‘democratic AI’ still allows New Delhi to deftly position this summit as one with a difference, shaped by Majority World’s aspirations and needs rather and enabling recalibration of “voice and influence [to] define economic and political power.”

The current state of the AI economy represents all the inequities of the data value economy — between Global North economies and Majority World countries, between BigTech and smaller companies, between corporations and consumers, between state and citizens. These inequities have been further exacerbated by those emerging from the disproportionate access that a handful of actors have to compute and infrastructure critical for building AI. A democratic vision of AI would need to be multi-faceted to reorient these connected but distinct inequities.

New Delhi seeks a ‘Delhi Declaration’ as a concrete policy goal of the summit focused on its three pillars of ‘People, Planet and Progress.’ However, given India’s approach to AI regulation, such a declaration is unlikely to translate into any real leadership toward global governance of AI. India’s AI Governance Guidelines, released in the run up to this summit, were as light-touch as any AI regulation can conceivably be, signaling that the government views risks to people from the deployment of AI as very low on priority on the regulatory agenda.

By choosing to focus on a singular aspect of equitable AI that is greater access to data and infrastructure for domestic companies, while adopting a US-style AI deregulation approach, New Delhi has chosen a selective and narrow definition of democratization that favors a handful of foreign and domestic Big Tech firms, and a narrow sliver of local industry actors.

The ‘Third Way’ slips away?

For years, India’s digital regulatory apparatus and industry actors close to it have spoken about the need for an India-led ‘third way’ approach to different digital policy issues — from data protection to digital sovereignty, from digital infrastructure to now AI.

As someone who has been involved in digital policy debates in India for the last decade, I have followed this discourse with some interest across these domains. This regulatory ambition is laudable and indeed much needed — regulatory approaches in the North rarely translate effectively in emerging economies with lower state capacity and often more complex regulatory problems.

However, this so-called third way has not amounted to much in terms of concrete regulatory solutions. The ‘Personal Data Stores’-style solutions in the domain of data protection offered some promise, particularly if they were to be successful in adapting privacy principles of data minimization in the technological design. If they had been used effectively in conjunction with robust legal protections, they would have eased the process of adoption of privacy-first data practices. By favoring untested ‘reg-tech’ and significantly diluting privacy principles, it left India with a highly inadequate data protection regulation.

Across domains, it has also become increasingly clear that the Indian third way ultimately comes back to digital public infrastructure (DPI), with Aadhaar, India’s biometric ID, as its core. These DPIs, central to India’s digital story globally, are freighted with the responsibility of solving dramatically diverse policy objectives — from enabling digitalization and increasing access to fostering profitable business models; from facilitating data maximalism and surveillance to somehow solving for privacy; offering Indian alternatives to foreign Big Tech firms while simultaneously relying on significant investments from the same corporations.

Digital sovereignty

The India AI Impact Summit is occurring at a time when the word ‘digital sovereignty’ has more political currency and urgency than ever before. The rest of the world’s dependence on US and Chinese digital infrastructure has grown steadily for years, but the AI race between the two countries and the Trump administration’s blatant and forceful policies of pushing its deregulation agenda beyond its borders has brought this issue front and center.

This week’s summit could have offered strategic leadership opportunities for New Delhi to work toward greater co-operation between middle powers. For the last two decades, India and the US grew closer as geographical and global rivals respectively to the rising economic and political might of China. That relationship, built bit-by-bit after decades of mistrust, has been set back considerably over the last year, with India among the countries most badly hit with tariffs by the US. New Delhi has been particularly peeved at President Donald Trump repeatedly claiming credit for the ceasefire between India and Pakistan last year, the Modi government has been left to manage a tricky narrative on strategic autonomy, and the specific contours of the recent US-India trade deal may continue to pose problems for it in domestic politics.

New Delhi has often talked tough on digital sovereignty even before the terms became fashionable, across issues like data flows, content moderation, cybersecurity and most recently, digital competition. But it has often rolled back these policies in the face of lobbying and international pressure, most notably from the US. To that extent, digital sovereignty has served its rhetorical ends, not concrete policymaking.

An opportunity missed?

While New Delhi has pursued strategic trade deals with other middle powers in the past months, the summit could have offered scope for increased alignment and diplomacy, committing to pooling of resources, and leveraging shared markets across middle powers seeking to break out the US-China dominance, with a Majority World country leading. By designing an AI summit focused primarily on seeking investments from Big Tech companies, New Delhi may have squandered a big opportunity.

There is talk that the Delhi Declaration that could emerge from the summit will focus on ‘democratization’, but it remains to be seen whether the words in it are mere rhetoric or represent true political will that translates into concrete commitments. Perhaps more significantly, the Indian government has used the summit to seek voluntary participation from BigTech companies, among others, to “share data on real-world AI use and strengthen the proficiency of their models across languages.” If successful, this could potentially provide access to valuable data for policymakers and industry not just in India, but in other parts of the world as well.

Ultimately, focusing its efforts so squarely on courting and negotiating with US companies betrays a lack of ambition and imagination by India’s leaders. When this series of summits began in 2023, it raised hopes of evolving into a model something akin to the UN Climate Change Conference, which would facilitate ​​international, consensus-based negotiations based on evidence with every convening offering iterative progress on commitments. India, as a key emerging power from the Majority World, could have been uniquely placed to opt for a vision of the AI Impact Summit not simply focused on raising capital from extractive players who have captured the global market on AI, but as first steps toward a consensus between key middle powers on contesting this concentration of power.

Maybe next time.