At the AI Impact Summit in Delhi, it’s hard to figure where to look or whom to talk to and about what. So much is happening, so many institutions, people from the academic world to industry, and of course government leaders.
For Dr V Kamakoti, Director IIT Madras, the AI Summit is about India, about the aspirations of its young and what AI can deliver in terms of its development needs. Dr Kamakoti said there are three broad takeaways from the summit.
“Our children must understand and they should all know, get some idea of how to shape their career in this a world. Number two is we need to now put the entire jigsaw puzzle of building a systems of. How do we put this jigsaw puzzle together to make a very good, safe, trustworthy, efficient, effective system.
“And as policymakers we need to have a common denominator regarding standards of what to use, how to use where not to use AI and how do we bring a good global order so that everybody benefits out of AI.”
He pointed to the fact that no less than the prime minister was there along with policymakers and heads of government from all over the world. Add to that established industries, startups and research centres.
“We have opened four centers of excellence in AI in agriculture which is IIT Ropar, for smart cities it is in IIT Kanpur, for health it is in IIT Bombay and education is in IIT Delhi. So we are looking at all these four sectors in a very big way.”
He also made it clear that whatever the US may want in terms of its own AI stack being used, India must have its own sovereign AI stack.
“We need to have our own sovereign stack. There is no going back on that. And unless we do it, we will again become dependent. In semiconductor we are trying to come out of it. We must have sovereign solutions.”
Tune in for more in this conversation with Dr V Kamakoti, Director IIT Madras.

