Tech Leaders Fly to India For AI Summit Amid a Raft of Concerns

As artificial intelligence evolves at a rapid pace, world leaders, tech heavyweights and thousands of other delegates were flying to New Delhi to discuss how to handle the technology at the AI Impact Summit, which opened on Monday.

Indian officials were hoping the event would spur further investment promises, but analysts have warned that with difficult issues on the agenda, such as job disruption and safety concerns, those concerns could make concrete commitments from world leaders less likely.

While frenzied demand for generative AI has turbocharged profits for many tech companies, anxiety is growing over the risks that it poses to society and the environment.

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The five-day AI Impact Summit aims to declare a “shared roadmap for global AI governance and collaboration”.

It is the fourth annual gathering addressing the problems and opportunities posed by AI, after previous international meetings in Paris, Seoul and Britain’s wartime code-breaking hub Bletchley.

Touted as the biggest edition yet, the Indian government is expecting tens of thousands of visitors from across the sector.

That includes 20 national leaders and 45 ministerial-level delegations, who will rub shoulders with tech CEOs such as Sam Altman of OpenAI and Google’s Sundar Pichai.

“The AI Impact Summit will enrich global discourse on diverse aspects of AI, such as innovation, collaboration, responsible use and more,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X.

It is “further proof that our country is progressing rapidly in the field of science and technology,” and “shows the capability of our country’s youth”, added Modi, who inaugurated the event later on Monday.

At the busy conference site, panels and roundtables were held on topics ranging from how AI can make India’s treacherous roads safer to how South Asian women are engaging with the technology.

Three ‘sutras’

But whether Modi and the likes of France’s Emmanuel Macron and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will take meaningful steps to hold AI giants accountable is in doubt, said Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute.

“Even the much-touted industry voluntary commitments made at these events have largely been narrow ‘self regulatory’ frameworks that position AI companies to continue to grade their own homework,” she told AFP.

The Bletchley gathering in 2023 was called the AI Safety Summit, but the meetings’ names have changed as they have grown in size and scope.

At last year’s AI Action Summit in Paris, dozens of nations signed a statement calling for efforts to regulate AI tech to make it “open” and “ethical”.

The United States did not sign, with Vice President JD Vance warning that “excessive regulation… could kill a transformative sector just as it’s taking off”.

The Delhi summit has the loose themes of “people, progress, planet” – dubbed three “sutras” (sacred texts). AI safety remains a priority, including the dangers of misinformation such as deepfakes.

“There is real scope for change” although it might not happen fast enough to prevent harm to minors, said AI Asia Pacific Institute director Kelly Forbes, whose organisation is researching how Australia and other countries are requiring platforms to confront the issue.

AI for ‘the many’

Organisers highlight this year’s AI summit as the first hosted by a developing country.

“The summit will shape a shared vision for AI that truly serves the many, not just the few,” India’s IT ministry has said.

Last year India leapt to third place – overtaking South Korea and Japan – in an annual global ranking of AI competitiveness calculated by Stanford University researchers.

But despite plans for large-scale infrastructure and grand ambitions for innovation, experts say the country has a long way to go before it can rival the United States and China.

Key concerns

The five big issues on the agenda are: job loss fears, preventing real-world harm, energy demands, moves to regulate AI and existential fears.

Existential fears have also been expressed by AI insiders who believe the technology is marching towards so-called “Artificial General Intelligence”, when machines’ abilities match those of humans.

OpenAI and rival startup Anthropic have seen public resignations of staff members who have spoken out about the ethical implications of their technology.

Anthropic warned last week that its latest chatbot models could be nudged towards “knowingly supporting – in small ways – efforts toward chemical weapon development and other heinous crimes”.

Researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, author of the 2025 book “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All” has also compared AI to the development of nuclear weapons.