Stories
India's AI Revolution: Learning from the Past to Own the Future
- •India's manufacturing share plummeted from 25% in 1750 to under 2% by 1900 due to the first machine age, highlighting the importance of owning, not just using, new technologies.
- •The second machine age, driven by AI, is accelerating rapidly, with predictions of AI surpassing human intelligence within a decade and adding trillions to global GDP.
- •India is uniquely positioned for this AI era with top AI skill penetration, the fastest-growing user base for AI, and government initiatives like IndiaAI Mission and Semiconductor Mission.
- •To convert this position into power, India must treat compute as public infrastructure, leverage its diverse languages for AI training, prioritize sovereign models in government procurement, and anchor AI parks to solar corridors.
- •This time, India aims to choose its machines and write its own rules, learning from past industrial revolutions to ensure it is a creator and owner in the AI age, not just a consumer.
Key Questions Answered
The second machine age runs on three fundamental ores: compute, energy, and data. Compute involves advanced chips and training runs subject to export controls, energy relates to the massive electricity demands of data centres, and data refers to the linguistic and cultural information fed into AI models.
To turn position into power, India must implement four key decisions: treat compute as public infrastructure by scaling GPU access, turn its 22 languages and records into leverage via an open license corpus, let the state be the first customer for domestic models, and pair intelligence with solar energy to ensure cheap production.
India holds unique assets, including ranking first globally in AI skill penetration, a massive developer base, and a fifth of the world's semiconductor design engineers. Additionally, initiatives like the IndiaAI Mission providing subsidised GPUs, the Semiconductor Mission, and sovereign models like Sarvam and BharatGen provide crucial structural advantages.
