‘India well positioned to lead and shape AI’, says Sam Altman, a sharp turn from his 2023 ‘hopeless’ remark

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said India is uniquely positioned to influence the global artificial intelligence landscape, not merely as a consumer or builder of AI systems, but as a country capable of shaping the technology’s future.

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit, Altman said, “India, the world’s largest democracy, is well positioned to lead in AI, not just to build it, but to shape it, and decide what our future’s going to look like.”

The remarks mark a notable shift from June 2023, when Altman had dismissed the idea that India could build a competitive foundation model on a modest budget. Responding then to a question about whether a small team with limited resources could compete, he said bluntly: “It’s totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models.”

At the summit, however, Altman highlighted India’s rapid progress in sovereign AI, infrastructure, and adoption. “It’s incredible to see the country’s leadership in advanced AI,” he said, noting that the pace of change since his last visit “a little over a year ago” had been striking.

“We’ve gone from AI systems that struggled with high school level math to systems that can do research level mathematics now and derive the results of theoretical physics,” Altman said, underscoring the speed of technological advances.

He also pointed to India’s massive user base and developer momentum. “One hundred million people in India use ChatGPT every week. More than a third of them are students,” he said, adding that India is “the fastest growing market for Codex,” OpenAI’s coding agent.

Looking ahead, Altman warned that the world may be approaching a transformative milestone. “On our current trajectory, we believe we may be only a couple of years away from early versions of true superintelligence,” he said. “By the end of 2028, more of the world’s intellectual capacity could reside inside of data centres than outside of them.”

Despite the disruptive potential, he argued that democratisation, not concentration, of AI power is essential. “Democratisation of AI is the only fair and safe path forward,” he said, warning that centralization in a single company or government could lead to undesirable outcomes.

“We can choose to either empower people or concentrate power,” he said, adding that regulation and international coordination would be necessary. He suggested the world may need an institution similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency to oversee advanced AI.

While acknowledging job disruption, Altman struck an optimistic tone on long-term economic benefits. AI progress, he said, could make healthcare, education, and physical goods “much cheaper” while driving faster growth.