NEW DELHI: India will host the next international summit on artificial intelligence, confirmed the office of French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who co-chaired the AI summit with President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, had earlier announced that India would be happy to host the next such event on its territory.
As the global AI summit shifts from safety in 2023 to action in 2025, India aims to balance the global governance framework by making it inclusive, sustainable, and mindful of the needs of Global South countries.
India has been part of all five working groups dealing with international governance, the future of work, security and safety, AI for general interest, and innovation and culture in the run-up to the summit that France co-chaired with India. Though there are differences among the countries especially from the US and UK, efforts are still on to get an outcome statement of the summit.
As geopolitics play its part in the shaping of AI governance structure, Prime Minister Narendra Modi placed a premium on both inclusivity and sustainability hoping that such an approach would be good as it would foster innovation and benefit maximum countries across the globe.
“Governance is also about ensuring access to all, especially in the Global South. It is where the capacities are most lacking - be it compute power, talent, data, or the financial resources,” Prime Minister Modi said at the summit. We aim to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of people,” Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said. Since its G-20 Presidency, India has been working to include more countries from the Global South to be part of the AI conversation and its governance structure. And it believes that an innovation-focused approach can befit all.
S Krishnan, Secretary, of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, pointed out that as the summit moves from safety to action focus should be on innovation to reap the benefit of AI. “Focus should be on innovation and this is like what was Y2K moment for Indian IT industry,” he said AI bring transformative changes and India is seized of it.
“AI can help transform millions of lives by improving health, education, agriculture and so much more. It can help create a world in which the journey to Sustainable Development Goals becomes easier and faster. At the same time, Sustainable AI does not only mean using clean energy. AI models must also be efficient and sustainable in size, data needs and resource requirements. After all, the human brain manages to compose poetry and designs spaceships using less power than most lightbulbs,” Modi said at the summit. India also would like to see the membership of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) grow. It has now 44 more members GPAI endeavours to bridge the gap between theoretical understanding and practice in the realm of AI.

Earlier, Prime Minister Modi on Tuesday said AI writing the code for humanity in this century by transforming politics and society, urging global cooperation to establish governance that addresses risks and fosters trust, as the European Union moves towards a more relaxed regulatory approach to remain competitive, following President Donald Trump's removal of previous safeguards to pave the way for a new tech race.
“AI is writing the code for humanity in this century… AI is developing at an unprecedented scale and speed. And being adopted and deployed even faster. There is also a deep interdependence across borders. Therefore, there is a need for collective global efforts to establish governance and standards, that uphold our shared values, address risks, and build trust,” Modi told the gathering of world leaders that included US Vice PresidentJD Vance, and Chinese vice-premier Zhang in his opening remarks.
“While the positive potential of AI is amazing, there are many biases that we need to think carefully about,” Modi said.
Laying a roadmap of what should entail in the governance of AI, Modi called for promoting innovation and deploying it for the global good. “So, we must think deeply and discuss openly about innovation and governance,” Modi said. “Governance is also about ensuring access to all, especially in the Global South. It is where the capacities are most lacking - be it compute power, talent, data, or the financial resource,” he said.
Modi emphasized the need to create open-source systems that foster trust, build unbiased data sets, democratize technology, and develop people-centric applications, while also addressing cyber security, disinformation, and deepfakes ensuring technology is deeply integrated into local ecosystems for maximum effectiveness. Stating that loss of jobs is AI’s “most feared disruption,” Modi said: “But, history has shown that work does not disappear due to technology. Its nature changes and new types of jobs are created. We need to invest in skilling and re-skilling our people for an AI-driven future.”
Modi said India is developing AI applications for the public good and is “ready to share its experience and expertise to ensure that the AI future is for Good and All.”
This edition of the summit drew attention from the world due to developments worldwide including President Trump’s decision to get rid of the guardrails has put pressure on the EU to adopt a more relaxed approach to AI regulation to help companies remain competitive in the tech race.
The European Union's digital chief, Henna Virkkunen, also pledged that the bloc would streamline its rules and implement them in a more business-friendly way. President Trump's early actions on AI have highlighted the growing differences in the strategies to regulate AI between the United States, China, and the EU that the summit is trying to address. So far, the US and UK haven’t come around to sign a joint statement on the outcomes of the meeting. India, meanwhile, demands that the global south countries need to get a larger say in the AI governance architecture. “Only a multipolar world can ensure that AI develops with the least bias," External Affairs Minister Jaishankar told the India-France CEO forum.