Will India's AI Action Summit redefine global AI governance?
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After Britain, South Korea and France, it's India's turn to host the next AI Action Summit . GoI has invited public comments until June 30 to shape the summit, which sets the tone for AI governance . India is expected to bring global majority perspectives from the margins to the mainstream and exhibit a unique approach to the delicate balancing acts involved in AI governance.First, there is the question of whether to regulate, and if so, how. The recent US proposal to ban state AI laws for 10 years is seen by many as pro-innovation. By contrast, the EU's AI Act takes a more precautionary, product-safety approach. China's approach tends to tailor regulation to authoritarian state control. Beyond this dichotomy, India is often seen as capable of offering a third way. The summit presents an opportunity for India to showcase elements of this approach and take on the equally thorny question of how open or closed AI development should be.On openness, India can push beyond the binary of 'open or closed' approaches to releasing AI base models. Some argue that AI models must be kept under the control of a small number of people. Others argue that base models should be released with no restrictions.India has no interest in a future where a handful of US and Chinese companies hold the key to advanced AI models and can arbitrarily restrict their use. At the same time, however, openness should not be understood in a purely libertarian way where people can do whatever they want with these models.What we need is a truly open approach that enables independent evaluation of how the foundation models work so that they can be used to innovate without inadvertently importing the latest US political, one-upmanship-driven ideas or Chinese state censorship. Demanding this openness and transparency, followed by independent testing and evaluation, should be a key goal for India with its new AI Safety Institute (ASI).Additionally, ASI must take the lead in ensuring that systems, particularly in high-impact domains such as public services, are secure and reliable. With its 'Safe and Trusted AI' pillar, the IndiaAI mission is encouraging projects on bias mitigation, privacy enhancement and governance testing-themes that should reflect in the summit's agenda-and affirming the stance taken by the EU to push for ' Trustworthy AI '.It is key here, however, that trustworthiness, privacy and safety are not merely demanded of AI systems but rather achieved through effective governance frameworks. Many of the purported benefits of AI are undermined if the data is not secure, if the system responses are unreliable or biased, and if the public turns against the technology due to high-profile scandals.A telling case is that of the 'Child Benefits Scandal' in the Netherlands, where an opaque and discriminatory system mistakenly flagged thousands of families for benefits-related fraud. In response, the Netherlands is working towards improving AI accountability through human rights impact assessments and public databases of government AI systems. Public trust in AI systems can only be achieved through robust transparency and accountability practices.Centring global conversations and policy imperatives on open, transparent and rights-protecting AI development reduces uncertainty and offers a level playing field for smaller players, even if it is not enshrined in dedicated legislation but through an ecosystem of institutional oversight via ASI and adaptation of existing laws, as is the preference of the IndiaAI mission.The logic is straightforward-when a tech is built to be rights-respecting and safe, more people trust it, and therefore more people use it, particularly when it can be independently verified. It's a win-win for commerce, rights and governance.In the global majority, such frameworks are necessary because without close attention to the impact of AI models, the region risks becoming a testing ground for nascent and half-baked technology that is developed elsewhere. Their absence could result in 'innovation arbitrage,' a term used to refer to the exploitation of regulatory gaps to deploy questionable technology. The harms of AI-driven systems without oversight are well-documented-be it opaque, unaccountable data collection practices that give people no real choice, or flawed algorithmic decisions that impact people's education, employment and healthcare.In demanding openness, transparency, and security, India has an opportunity to work with the global majority countries to develop shared approaches and demands. Demanding such inclusion and space for leadership would allow us to leverage our collective expertise to ensure 'access for all'-a key goal of GoI. The AI Impact Summit is the moment to bring like-minded countries together and lay out a roadmap for how AI development can be driven in a way that benefits the global majority and allows for individual and regional autonomy, instead of cementing hegemony.
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