At the ongoing annual summit of World Economic Forum in Davos, India's Minister of Electronics & Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw rejected International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva's assertion that India belongs to the second-tier of AI economies.
Without mincing words, Vaishnaw said, "I don't know what the IMF criteria have been, but Stanford places India as third in the world in terms of AI penetration, in terms of AI preparedness and in terms of AI talent."
He told the IMF chief directly regarding the classification, "I don't think your classification in the second tier is right. It's actually in the first."
The minister said, India's comparative advantage in AI lies in building and delivering applications for enterprises.
Vaishnaw said, "On the application layer, we will probably be the biggest supplier of services to the world... Such application-driven adoption is where returns are realised. Returns on Investment (ROI) does not come from creating a very large model... The bulk of use-cases can be addressed using models in the range of 20 to 50 billion parameters."
Vaishnaw said, "India's push has five layers in the AI architecture - application layer, model layer, chip layer, infrastructure layer and energy layer. We are working on all the five layers and are making very good progress across each layer."
The IMF chief had earlier remarked that India is lagging behind in the AI race compared to other countries like US and China, which are leading the race.
Vaishnaw cited facts and figures to rubbish this claim. He said India stands in the first tier of countries that are working on AI.
The manner in which the minister rebutted IMF claim clearly shows, those days are gone when the World Bank and IMF used to show India in a poor light.
Vaishnaw's remarks show, India can now look into the eyes of world powers and make assertions. He clearly showed, India's assertion was right, backed by proper reasoning, while the IMF's assertion was wrong.
Vaishnaw described in details how India, as one of leading economies of the world, is making its mark as an AI world power and how India stands at No. 2 as far as AI talents are concerned.
The message is clear. Those in international institutions who create categories and ratings must be careful while making assertions.
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