At the prestigious World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw championed India’s vanguard role in AI evolution. During the influential ‘AI Power Play’ panel, he detailed advancements spanning AI’s foundational pillars: apps, models, specialized chips, robust infrastructure, and energy solutions.
Central to India’s blueprint is a focus on actionable AI that delivers tangible returns, rather than chasing monumental model sizes. Vaishnaw noted, ‘95% of practical scenarios are resolved with mid-sized models of 20-50 billion parameters,’ prioritizing efficiency over extravagance.
This philosophy has birthed cost-efficient AI solutions integrated seamlessly into agriculture, healthcare, and manufacturing, driving unprecedented productivity gains.
Countering mainstream rankings, the minister invoked Stanford’s analysis affirming India’s elite status—third in adoption readiness and second in talent density. Tackling compute shortages head-on, India launched a democratized GPU ecosystem with 38,000 units in a subsidized national facility, priced at one-third global benchmarks for emerging talents.
Bolstering this is a massive upskilling campaign to equip 10 million individuals with AI expertise, fortifying the startup and IT landscapes for worldwide competitiveness. Vaishnaw envisioned India’s economic surge to third global position, anchored in this AI mastery.