India's next moves after Paris AI summit
This article is authored by Arun Teja Polcumpally, JSW Science and Technology fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute, New Delhi.
The success of OpenAI’s deep research model, the efficient and low-cost development of China-based DeepSeek-R1, and the growing investments in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure all show that countries are positively aligned and competing for the economic and geopolitical advantage of AI. While the pace of AI development is exponential, AI regulation and public understanding struggle to keep pace. Building on this optimism around AI adoption and the need for responsible AI development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Emanual Macron—co-chairs of the AI Action Summit held in Paris on February 11-12—emphasised the need for international collaboration to develop AI for the public good. This brings us to the cardinal question of how the global community would develop AI responsibility and how crucial will be India’s role in it?
It is crucial to have a deeper understanding of AI's impact, especially in local contexts, along the AI life cycle—AI development and deployment—to advance people-centric AI. A key step in this process is analysing AI adoption in the development sector, where real-world applications can reveal adoption trends and challenges.
India has witnessed a surge in AI-driven initiatives, particularly in the non-profit and social enterprise sectors, aimed at empowering farmers, women, and marginalised communities in rural and remote regions. Notable programs include OpenAI’s JugalBandi, an AI conversational framework focused on transforming the Indian justice system, and Tech4Dev’s Gliffic, providing AI services to the development sector. Such initiatives have provided rich information on the barriers, inherent technical limitations, bias, and risks associated with AI adoption in India.
In his address to the Paris AI Summit’s plenary session, Modi highlighted the idea that AI should be people-centric and be rooted in local eco-systems, powered by quality data sets and open-source systems. He asserted that countries must work together to build the governance and standards needed to uphold shared values, address risks, and build trust. Also, advocating the idea that AI should be people-centric, the summit’s India-France AI Policy Roundtable emphasised democratising access to AI resources and collaborating to develop AI regulatory frameworks. Key discussion points also included the lack of arbitration mechanisms for cross-border data flows, the need for global AI standards and data interoperability, and opportunities for international collaboration in AI research.
India’s AI Safety Institute set up after the 2023 AI Safety Summit, and France’s National Institute for the Assessment of the Security of AI (INESIA) could work together to construct a framework for the two countries to develop joint risk assessment frameworks and AI governance models. India’s approach to the roundtable appears to have been influenced by a recent report from the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) on AI governance guidelines development for public consultation. Published on January 6, the report advocates a whole-of-government approach where AI governance frameworks consider the AI lifecycle and the role of various stakeholders. It also suggests establishing an Inter-Ministerial AI Coordination Committee, bringing together various ministries and departments of the government to understand the AI development, adoption, and regulatory landscape.
Further drawing a conclusion, the MeitY report advocates the development of AI governance frameworks built on local contexts, and cross-border collaboration requires an understanding of national requirements, data availability, data policies, and the current state of AI usage. It also advises establishing a technical secretariat under the MeitY to oversee this. The technical secretariat would pool experts from various domains to better understand the AI landscape separately from sectors like agriculture, health care, education, and along the AI lifecycle. To achieve the cross-border collaboration discussed during the 2nd India-France AI Roundtable in Paris, the proposed technical secretariats could be established under MeitY and France’s ministry of the economy, finance, and industrial and digital sovereignty to collaborate, periodically assess AI’s impact, and refine governance frameworks.
With India’s AI Safety Institute and France’s INESIA taking shape, both nations have a unique opportunity to co-develop risk assessment frameworks that balance innovation with security. Analysing real-world applications in India, such as AI adoption in the development sector and assessing homegrown language models, will be a big part of this, assisting Indian and French policymakers in identifying adoption trends, assessing barriers, and addressing gaps in infrastructure, regulations, and accessibility. It would be interesting to see if India and France could jointly develop AI governance frameworks for the next year Summit, which is likely to be hosted by India.
This article is authored by Arun Teja Polcumpally, JSW Science and Technology fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute, New Delhi.
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