- In the eyes of the global community, India was always considered a nation with huge diversity, potential, and promise but never rose on expected lines to deliver goods. Historical evidence suggests how repeated attacks, conquests, and colonization marred the growth of the nation to such a great extent. Despite being blessed with a rich heritage, culture, tradition, ethnicity, and religious complexities, India as a country could not keep the marauding conquistadors from leaving a trail of destruction. This continued for centuries, leaving the country in tatters. Thanks to some of the most trailblazing personalities taking up the cudgel to restore the country’s great heritage, Indianness would have been lost for good.
PC: Freepik
- Thus, the immense potential could not be transformed into substantial emergence vis-à-vis some of the most defining industrial revolutions witnessed globally. Will the new industrial revolution being bandied about by Nvidia CEO provide an opportunity for the country to step up and deliver? Let’s dwelve to infer this. As mentioned above, India has been a latecomer to each of the previous industrial, epochal transformations of the way humans live and work. Ditto for the platform shifts represented by personal computers, the internet, etc. This time around, with generative AI, there is no lag between the release of a new app and its widespread use by Indians. But this is no comfort at all. Because reality-defining LLMs, the AI apps, none of these are Made in India.
- As the CEO underlined last week, the country should not export data to import intelligence. His visit saw various partnership announcements between the world’s top GPU maker and India’s top industrial conglomerates. He shared how he had been asked to address the Union Cabinet about AI six years ago, long before Nvidia began flirting with being the world’s most valuable company. The enthusiasm is clear. The understanding of how important it is for India to be not just the recipient but also the maker of these powerful AI tools that are being innovated daily. Maybe, so is the ambition to do it. But the doing is lagging. The smarts, sweat, and capital put into it fall short. Yes, all the triumphs of digital public infra suggest that Indians have the ability.
PC: Freepik
- To train and run AI systems more frugally than the Americans, the Chinese, and Emiratis. But so far, we have not created one AI lab of global repute. Unless India does the R&D to create its IP it will once again end up being the back-office. This, as the CEO said, is the difference between those who only make money when they spend hours at work and those who can make money when they’re sleeping, between an industry of cost reduction and an industry of innovation. Also, compared to US’s around 5400 data centres, India has around 150, a number even more unsatisfactory when you factor in AI models’ much bigger appetite for data. The past need not at all be the guide to the future. India can reinvent itself as the front office. But it needs both the public and private sectors to outperform themselves, both in R&D and infra-building.
