The high-profile AI Summit comes against the backdrop of India positioning itself as a global hub for digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence
Published Date – 17 February 2026, 01:08 AM
The five-day Artificial Intelligence Summit 2026, being hosted by India in New Delhi, provides an ideal opportunity for the country to serve as the voice of the Global South in democratising AI development to make it inclusive and accessible, particularly for developing nations. The mega event brings together delegates from over 100 countries, including global tech moguls, AI founders, policymakers, innovators, bureaucrats, and experts to deliberate on the transformative potential of AI across governance, innovation, and sustainable development. The scale and profile of the summit underline India’s effort to assert a stronger voice in shaping how artificial intelligence is governed and deployed worldwide, particularly at a time when countries are divided over regulation, access, and technological competition. So far, the Global South has remained outside the purview of the agenda-setting deliberations covering AI technologies. India, with a strong digital structure and innovative initiatives, is ideally positioned to push for a narrative focused on equity and global cooperation to ensure that AI becomes a universal instrument for the benefit of mankind. AI must be used to build practical solutions, not just high-end demos. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has rightly cautioned against AI becoming a tool controlled solely by the most developed countries or dominated by two global superpowers, the US and China. He also highlighted India’s role in shaping a “true multipolar world”, where global influence is not concentrated in one dominant power. The high-profile event comes against the backdrop of India positioning itself as a global hub for digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence, capable of leading the next wave of the technology revolution.
The summit offers a chance to showcase India’s vast tech-savvy population and engineering talent as forces that could tilt the next phase of the global AI race in its favour. The country has digital infrastructure powered by data from over a billion citizens, identifiable through Aadhaar, a biometric ID system. It has a proven track record of scaling technology quickly despite late starts – missing the personal computer boom but becoming a software services powerhouse and leaping from limited landlines to nearly a billion smartphones in under two decades. Among the key initiatives is the ‘IndiaAI Mission’, which aims to build computing capacity, support startups and push AI use in public services such as healthcare and agriculture. India now stands at the forefront of the artificial intelligence transformation, and its strides in AI reflect both ambition and responsibility. By overlaying AI over existing digital identity, payment rails, as well as healthcare, education and governance stacks, India is attempting to compress decades of development into years. In AI competitiveness, it ranks third globally, after the United States and China, according to Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI. However, the country’s real breakthrough will come from strengthening its research ecosystem, instead of being just a testing lab for Silicon Valley’s algorithms.
