IBM's Amith Singhee highlights opportunities and challenges for India's AI potential

New Delhi, April 11: Amith Singhee, Director of IBM Research, India and Chief Technology Officer of IBM, India and South Asia, said that India's AI landscape stands at a critical point. With the rising demand for AI solutions across sectors, the country could become one of the most impactful AI markets globally. Yet, challenges such as data scarcity, vast linguistic diversity beyond the 22 scheduled languages, and socio-economic divides remain formidable.

While speaking at the 9th Carnegie Global Tech Summit on Friday, Amith Singhee said, "Fostering an environment, especially in a country like India, where we have such a huge demand for AI, the potential is probably higher than in any country in the world. But the challenges are also very unique, with the diversity, data scarcity. We have 1000 dialects if you look beyond the 22 languages. And it's not just the dialects, it's the economic and social strata."

He further said, "Deepseek was like a validation, more than a surprise to us, that you don't need a billion dollars to build a model. If you get the engineering right, you can build these things."

Lt. Gen Raj Shukla (Retd), Member, Union Public Service Commission, said, "DeepSeek is now open-source AI models that seem to be becoming as powerful as the proprietary American models. The challenge is whether the American models will be able to monetise the technology as an exclusive product or collapse."

He further said, "The Deepseek is remarkable for more than one reason. The CEO of Deepseek takes funding from its parent company, the Chinese head fund. This allows Deepseek to focus on fundamental research, and, of late, if you have seen Ali Baba, they have been flooding the market with AI models in business and commerce. So you have the research being complimented with business and commerce..."

Arvind Gupta, Director of the Vivekananda International Foundation, sees "DeepSeek" as Vedantic and said that while India may not yet have its own DeepSeek model, the country can use this opportunity to "seek deep and seek where we are."

"I like the word DeepSeek as it's a very vedantic concept that you seek within. And I think that's what India should be doing. It may not have a DeepSeek model. This is an opportunity to seek deep and seek where we are," Arvind Gupta said.

Earlier, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, speaking at the 9th Carnegie Global Tech Summit on Friday, said that now is not the time to make any determination about DeepSeek.

When asked if the government was considering a possible ban on the Chinese AI platform DeepSeek, like the Chinese social media app TikTok, Jaishankar said he would choose to be evasive now.

"I will be deeply evasive about the answer. My honest answer is, I don't think at this time there is any determination," he said.

Earlier, on February 5, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said that India will have its first foundational Artificial Intelligence model in about 10 months. The Minister said that the government is going to host an open-source model like the Chinese 'DeepSeek' on Indian servers.

This comes at a time when Chinese startups have challenged the AI world. The minister said one must look at the entire India AI mission in a more comprehensive manner. He said India approved the AI mission last year, with an allocation of about Rs 10,000 crore.

Reader Comments

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Priya K.

This is such an exciting time for AI in India! 🇮🇳 The linguistic diversity challenge is real though - my grandparents speak a dialect that isn't even recognized officially. Hope researchers can find solutions to include all voices.

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Rahul S.

While I appreciate the optimism, I think we're underestimating the infrastructure challenges. Building AI models is one thing, but making them accessible across rural India with our current internet connectivity? That's a whole different battle.

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Ananya P.

The Vedantic connection to DeepSeek is fascinating! Ancient Indian philosophy meeting cutting-edge tech - this is the kind of unique perspective we need in AI development. More of this please!

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Vikram J.

₹10,000 crore sounds like a lot, but is it enough? The US and China are pouring billions into AI. We need serious private sector partnerships to compete globally. Hope IBM and others step up.

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Sanjay M.

The minister being "deeply evasive" about DeepSeek tells you everything 😅 After the TikTok experience, can't blame them for being cautious with Chinese tech. But we need clear policies soon.

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Neha R.

As an AI researcher, I'm thrilled about India's potential! The diversity challenge is actually our strength - if we can solve for India, our solutions will work anywhere in the world. Let's go! 💪

We welcome thoughtful discussions from our readers. Please keep comments respectful and on-topic.