New Delhi (AFP) – US artificial intelligence chip titan Nvidia unveiled tie-ups with Indian computing firms on Wednesday as tech companies rushed to announce deals and investments at a global AI conference in New Delhi. This week’s AI Impact Summit is the fourth annual gathering to discuss how to govern the fast-evolving technology — and also an opportunity to “define India’s leadership in the AI decade ahead,” organisers say.
Mumbai cloud and data centre provider L&T said it was teaming up with Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, to build what it touted as “India’s largest gigawatt-scale AI factory.” “We are laying the foundation for world-class AI infrastructure that will power India’s growth,” said Nvidia boss Jensen Huang in a statement that did not put a figure on the investment. L&T said it would use Nvidia’s powerful processors, which can train and run generative AI tech, to provide data centre capacity of up to 30 megawatts in Chennai and 40 megawatts in Mumbai.
Nvidia said it was also working with other Indian AI infrastructure players such as Yotta, which will deploy more than 20,000 top-end Nvidia Blackwell processors as part of a $2 billion investment. Dozens of world leaders and ministerial delegations have come to India for the summit to discuss the opportunities and threats, from job losses to misinformation, that AI poses. Last year, India leapt to third place — overtaking South Korea and Japan — in an annual global ranking of AI competitiveness calculated by Stanford University researchers. But despite plans for large-scale infrastructure and grand ambitions for innovation, experts say the country has a long way to go before it can rival the United States and China.
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The conference has also brought a flurry of deals, with IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw saying Tuesday that India expects more than $200 billion in investments over the next two years, including roughly $90 billion already committed. Separately, India’s Adani Group said Tuesday it plans to invest $100 billion by 2035 to develop “hyperscale AI-ready data centres,” a boost to New Delhi’s push to become a global AI hub. Microsoft said it was investing $50 billion this decade to boost AI adoption in developing countries, while US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic and Indian IT giant Infosys said they would work together to build AI agents for the telecoms industry.
Nvidia’s Huang is not attending the AI summit but other top US tech figures joining include OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other world leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are expected to deliver a statement at the end of the week about how they plan to address concerns raised by AI technology.
But experts say that the broad focus of the event and vague promises made at previous global AI summits in France, South Korea and Britain mean that concrete commitments are unlikely. Nick Patience, practice lead for AI at tech research group Futurum, told AFP that nonbinding declarations could still “set the tone for what acceptable AI governance looks like.” But “the largest AI companies deploy capabilities at a pace that makes 18-month legislative cycles look glacial,” Patience said. “So it’s a case of whether governments can converge fast enough to create meaningful guardrails before de facto standards are set by the companies themselves.”
© 2024 AFP
