The development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the United States has followed a familiar trajectory: innovation followed by concentration. Over the last few years, a small handful of companies have rapidly consolidated control of the industry, to the point that the progress of a handful of companies has become effectively synonymous with the health of AI nationally.
While the U.S. undoubtedly has a significant lead in AI thanks to its Big Tech champions, the potential downsides of this approach have been apparent for some time.A 2021 report from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), presided over by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, noted that “the development of AI in the United States is concentrated in fewer organizations in fewer geographic regions pursuing future research pathways,” and suggested this lack of competition could harm U.S. competitiveness.
In the years since, some steps have been taken to remedy this situation, notably the CREATE AI Act (which, tellingly, has still not received Congressional approval). But nothing has fundamentally changed. The question then arises: What would a more robust public-private partnership in the AI space look like? As it turns out, lawmakers in the U.S.—and around the world—can learn more than a thing or two on this front from what is currently happening in India.
Over the next 10 years, AI is projected to add just south of a trillion dollars to India’s economy. This is in no small part due to the Indian government’s ongoing efforts to foster a more active, open relationship between government, private enterprise, and academia in the AI space. Under the banner of what they’ve termed “AI for All,” the Indian authorities have designed a range of initiatives to harness AI’s potential for society while keeping the country competitive on the global stage. It’s an approach that is already paying off. India recently ranked first in the Stanford AI Index Report in Skill Penetration and Quantity of GitHub AI projects.
India is making AI accessible for researchers
India’s relationship with researchers is one key differentiator here. Historically, academics have played an essential role in the development of new technologies—unlocking the kind of use cases and capacities that more bottom-line-oriented businesses would have no incentive to pursue. In the U.S., the high cost of working with large AI models is making independent study of AI nearly impossible.
India is taking a markedly different approach, ensuring that researchers across a variety of fields—from health care to manufacturing to fintech—have access to the most advanced AI models. Just recently, the country’s Union Minister for Information Technology, Ashwini Vashnav, called for AI clusters with 10,000 GPUs to be constructed throughout the country on a public-private model. Three of the country’s top educational institutions will complement these clusters with India AI Centers that will function as the nerve centers of India’s tightly woven AI ecosystem: hubs of knowledge creation where government, industry, national and international academia, the startup sector, and other stakeholders can interact to advance the future of AI across the country (and beyond). These three centers—and the many “spoke” institutions they’ll be partnering with—will generate research, host conferences, help to incubate startups, and, crucially, train a new generation of AI researchers and entrepreneurs.
AI requires infrastructure
This open approach to AI development extends to the construction of India’s AI infrastructure. AI doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Its functioning requires unprecedentedly massive data centers, which in turn require massive quantities of energy.
The Indian government has invited multiple vendors and cloud providers to participate in building out the country’s AI infrastructure, smoothing the process through a variety of long-term incentives: power and land subsidies, operational cost subsidies, support for human resource development, and more. India’s government is also negotiating public-private partnerships to build AI cloud environments which will allow startups, large enterprises, and research institutions to harness the power of AI at subsidized rates. Again, openness and collaboration, key tenets of “AI for All”, have guided every step of the process here.
A more equitable future
The benefits of India’s concerted AI push are already starting to be felt by Indian citizens. AI awareness among the general public is very high, allowing aspiring entrepreneurs to hack through complex bureaucratic tangles to instantly find precisely what they need—the right form, the right contacts, information on incentives or loan eligibility, and more.
Meanwhile, organizations like Invest India, led by CEO, Nivruti Rai, are working on making the process for large foreign companies interested in doing business in India as seamless and self-service as possible with AI capabilities like uploading relevant project information to learn which policies might assist them.
We will never realize even a fraction of AI’s potential without society-wide collaboration. Countries hoping to gain an edge in the escalating AI arms race would be wise to take notice.
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