As New Delhi prepares to host the India AI Impact Summit from February 16, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has put India at the heart of the global discussion on who will lead the next phase of artificial intelligence development. India has “all the ingredients to be a full-stack AI leader”, Altman said ahead of his visit to the country for the summit. He pointed to India’s strong tech talent, clear national strategy and growing excitement about what AI can achieve.
Writing in The Times of India, Altman called India the world’s largest democracy and said the country blends local expertise with strong policy support to roll out AI on a large scale.
Talking about the government’s IndiaAI Mission, he said it aims to increase computing capacity, support startups and speed up multilingual AI applications in healthcare, agriculture and public services. The goal, he said, is to make AI “an essential tool for hundreds of millions of people across India”.
Altman highlighted how quickly India is adopting AI tools. He said the country now has “100 million weekly active users”, making it the second-largest user base after the US. He also noted that India has “the largest number of students on ChatGPT worldwide” and ranks fourth globally in the use of Prism, OpenAI’s free research and collaboration tool.
“India, the world’s largest democracy, has all the ingredients to be a full-stack AI leader: optimism about what AI can do for the country, homegrown tech talent, and a national strategy for how to incorporate the technology more widely,” Altman wrote in TOI.
The pillars of impact: Access, adoption and agency
He said expanding AI’s benefits depends on progress in three areas: “access, adoption, and agency”.
Explaining further, he said, “Access is the admission ticket; without it, people and institutions cannot participate fully in the AI era. Adoption is putting AI to work in classrooms, workplaces, and public services. Agency is what turns access and adoption into impact by giving people the ability and confidence to use AI to learn faster, build more, and make better decisions.”
At the same time, he warned about unequal growth. “If AI access and adoption are uneven, AI’s upside will be uneven, too”, he said, adding that a “capability overhang” could lead to productivity and economic gains being concentrated in a few hands if not addressed.
“OpenAI is committed to doing its part to help build AI in India, with India, and for India,” he said, adding that the company has made its tools available for free to widen access.
Deepening local partnerships
Altman shared that OpenAI recently brought together over 200 nonprofit leaders across four Indian cities to help them use ChatGPT. The company also opened its first office in Delhi last August and plans to expand further this year.
“We will soon be announcing new ways of partnering with the Indian government to put access to AI and its benefits within reach for more people across the country,” he said.
Ending on an optimistic note, Altman said, “AI will help define India’s future, and India will help define AI’s future. And it will do so in a way only a democracy can.”