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India's High Commissioner to the UK, Vikram Doraiswami, on Tuesday (local time) said that India is emerging as a major force in artificial intelligence and has significant potential to collaborate with the United Kingdom in advancing the technology.
Speaking at an AI-focused event hosted by the High Commission of India here, he highlighted India's growing role in the global AI ecosystem. Doraiswami said recent developments demonstrate the scale of capabilities India is building in the sector. "Some of the work that was showcased in the UK to start with--now nearly three years ago--and some of the work that was showcased a few weeks ago in India suggests to us that there is considerable opportunity for us to be able to bring together the enormous capabilities that the UK has already deployed on AI and the enormous capabilities that India is bringing to display in AI," he said. The High Commissioner noted that discussions around artificial intelligence have evolved significantly since the AI Summit series was initiated under the former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at Bletchley Park in 2023. "We have moved forward since then, beyond the idea of looking at AI as a concern and just worrying about what the security aspects of the AI piece might be, to figuring out how do you actually get and leverage AI as a mechanism for generating growth and inclusion, and ensuring that societies are both horizontally and vertically able to use AI," Doraiswami said. He stressed that artificial intelligence should generate benefits across societies, adding that the technology must deliver "a growth dividend for all of our countries; that AI delivers a people's dividend; and that AI delivers a--sort of--an inclusion dividend across nations and across geographies". Doraiswami also highlighted the untapped potential for India-UK cooperation in the technology sector, noting that the two countries have often pursued parallel efforts rather than working together. "For the longest time, however, in a lot of tech sectors, we have tended to run in parallel. We do stuff in India, you do stuff in the UK, and we all look at one or two other markets with whom we can align and offer our services. Just as we are looking for AI and technology to be a driver of growth horizontally across our countries, and inclusion horizontally across our countries, why not also try to link our countries together horizontally? There is an enormous opportunity for this," he said. Welcoming the presence of former British Prime Minister Sunak at the event, Doraiswami said discussions could help shape practical cooperation between the two countries in the AI sector. He said, "I'm particularly pleased that we have with us the former Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, and this extraordinary panel to be able to talk to us about what they saw coming out of the AI summit and to have a conversation with us about what we might do together leveraging the opportunities that have arisen between our two sectors." Looking ahead, he pointed to London Tech Week in June as an important milestone for advancing collaboration. He said, "The Tech Week coming up in London in June is a good benchmark for what we might actually do, and I really want us to be able to look at today's event as a scene setter for actual practical cooperation to come out by the time of the London Tech Week. In other words, building forward, we must actually have tangible takeaways from these events." (ANI)
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