It wasn’t so long ago that artificial intelligence was a niche concern, a subject for research labs and sci-fi thrillers, not the front page of global diplomacy. But today, AI isn’t just about technological breakthroughs—it’s about power, governance, and who gets to write the rules of the future. The recent Paris AI Summit saw the U.S. seek to shape the trajectory of the debates around AI governance, with Vice-President J.D. Vance’s focus on building AI, infrastructure, as opposed to “hand-wringing about safety,” underscoring Washington’s determination to shape the global regulatory framework in its own image.
Meanwhile, China’s DeepSeek, a frontier AI model with performance benchmarks rivalling ChatGPT-4, signals that Beijing isn’t content playing second fiddle in this race. Furthermore, the AI Diffusion rule, a U.S. policy announced by the Biden White House in its twilight-hour decision – which controls the spread of cutting-edge AI capabilities through a three-tier classification of countries – adds yet another layer of strategic competition. And in the midst of all this, India, a rising digital powerhouse, finds itself at a crossroads—striving to carve out its own leadership role in AI while navigating the competing pressures of regulation, innovation, and geopolitics. As New Delhi prepares to host its own AI Summit in late 2025, the real question is not just where India stands today but how might it appraise the recent developments to help it shape the AI order of tomorrow. This piece raises some open-ended questions to consider how India may approach this.
Recent Developments
We are crossing milestones in the field of AI faster than ever before. The arrival of ChatGPT was a seminal moment in the field of generative AI, attendant with concomitant advancements in computing power and machine learning. However, recent events ranging from developments in Washington to Paris to Beijing herald the arrival of an era in which technological breakthroughs and geopolitical events around them are outpacing our ability to track them.
