Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday firmly maintained that India belongs “clearly in the first group” of artificial intelligence (AI) powers, pushing
back against any suggestion that the country should be seen as a second-tier player in the global AI ecosystem.
Vaishnaw made the remarks while responding to comments by Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, during discussions at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The exchange unfolded during a panel discussion on the global impact of AI, where Georgieva said the world was already witnessing the arrival of AI and that several emerging market economies were showing comparative strength.
She named Saudi Arabia among those economies and said India would also be one of them because of the significant bet it has made on information technology at the higher end of the spectrum.
However, she added that low-income countries and a large number of middle-income economies were “way, way behind” in the AI race.
In a subsequent intervention, another speaker referred to India as the world’s fastest-growing major economy and an AI player, but suggested that it still fell into a “second grouping” of countries, arguing that such nations would have to think about alignments with the United States or China when charting their AI strategies.
Responding to these remarks, Vaishnaw said India should not be placed in any second grouping and stressed that the country’s approach to AI was comprehensive and end-to-end.
He explained that AI architecture rests on five critical layers, the application layer, the model layer, the chip layer, the infrastructure layer and the energy layer.
“We are working on all five layers, making very good progress in all five layers,” the minister said, underlining that India’s focus is on ensuring AI diffusion at scale.
Vaishnaw questioned the criteria used by the IMF in its assessment and cited global academic rankings to back his argument.
Referring to Stanford’s evaluations, he said India is placed third globally in terms of AI penetration and AI preparedness, and second in terms of AI talent.
“So I don’t think your classification in the second bouquet is right. It’s actually in the first,” he said.
Elaborating on India’s strengths, the minister highlighted the country’s dominance in the application layer of AI.
He said India is well-positioned to become the largest supplier of AI-driven services globally by understanding enterprise-level business needs and deploying AI applications to address them.
According to Vaishnaw, this is where real return on investment in AI is generated, rather than in merely creating extremely large foundational models.
He noted that a vast majority of AI work can be done using models with 20 to 50 billion parameters and said India already has a bouquet of such models that are being deployed across sectors to improve productivity, efficiency and effective use of technology.
ASHIWINI VAISHNAW AT DAVOS
On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum annual meeting, Vaishnaw also held several bilateral meetings with global technology leaders.
He met Joel Kaplan, Chief Global Affairs Officer of Meta, with discussions focusing on protecting social media users from deepfakes and AI-generated content.
Meta briefed the minister on the steps it is taking to safeguard users on its platforms.
The Union Minister also met Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, where discussions covered collaboration in advanced chip technologies, including 7 nm and 2 nm nodes.
Addressing questions from reporters, Vaishnaw said Davos is primarily a forum for sharing ideas through panels and bilateral interactions, rather than for formal delegation-to-delegation trade meetings.
He added that India remains deeply engaged with major economies on multiple fronts through other platforms.
Vaishnaw further said that India’s economic progress under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become a major subject of discussion among world leaders in Switzerland.
He said the Indian delegation is present at all major meetings at Davos to explain how the country is combining modern technology with fair and inclusive growth for all citizens, with India’s leadership role in technology emerging as a key theme across discussions.
