Union Minister for Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday dismissed International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva’s suggestion that India belongs to the second tier of AI economies, saying that India is clearly in the first group globally.
“I don’t know what the IMF’s criteria were, but Stanford ranks India third in terms of AI penetration, in terms of AI readiness and in terms of AI talent,” Vaishnaw said while addressing a panel at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.
The minister went directly to the head of the IMF about the classification and said: “I don’t think your classification in the second tier is correct. In fact, it is in the first.”
The Union Minister detailed India’s comprehensive strategy across the five layers of AI architecture, which include application, model, chip, infrastructure and energy. He noted that India is making significant progress in all these sectors to ensure its independence from the global technology field. Vaishnaw emphasized that India is charting its own course rather than conforming strictly to the paradigms set by the United States or China.
At the application layer, Vaishnaw envisioned India becoming the world’s largest supplier of AI services. He explained that success in deploying AI depends on understanding the enterprise’s business needs to deliver specific services, which is where the return on investment (ROI) is created. He argued that the return on investment does not come from building very large models, noting that “95% of the work can be done with models that have 20 billion or 50 billion parameters”.
The minister confirmed that India already has a “bouquet” of such models which are currently being deployed in various sectors to increase productivity and efficiency. He said the government’s focus remains on ensuring “the diffusion of artificial intelligence happens at scale” across the domestic economy.
I don’t think your classification in the second level is correct. It’s actually in the first one.
The panel, which focused on AI and the economy, included Saudi Arabia’s Investment Minister Khalid Al-Falih and Microsoft President Brad Smith. During the session, Vaishnaw argued that India’s status as the fastest growing major economy is supported by its talent, which he said is highly rated globally by Stanford.
