World leaders and tech CEOs gather in New Delhi to forge a governance roadmap, but critics warn of vague commitments and regulatory gaps.

NEW DELHI: A major global artificial intelligence summit opens in New Delhi today, aiming to build a shared roadmap for AI governance amid growing societal anxieties.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the five-day AI Impact Summit, which organisers say will host 250,000 visitors, including 20 national leaders.

Attendees include tech CEOs like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Google’s Sundar Pichai, though Nvidia’s Jensen Huang has reportedly cancelled his appearance.

The summit’s broad agenda covers job disruption, child safety, and environmental risks under the themes “people, progress, planet”.

Critics, however, warn the wide focus may dilute concrete outcomes, with past summits yielding only narrow self-regulatory frameworks.

“The industry commitments made at previous events have largely been narrow ‘self regulatory’ frameworks,” said Amba Kak of the AI Now Institute.

Kak, a former US Federal Trade Commission advisor, expressed doubt over whether meaningful steps to hold AI giants accountable would emerge.

AI safety remains a key priority, particularly regarding deepfakes and AI-generated harmful content.

A recent global backlash erupted over Elon Musk’s Grok AI tool for enabling users to create sexualised images of real people, including children.

“Child safety and digital harms are also moving up the agenda,” said Kelly Forbes, director of the AI Asia Pacific Institute.

Forbes noted “real scope for change” as countries like Australia begin requiring platforms to confront such issues, though progress may be slow.

This is the first AI summit hosted by a developing nation, with India aiming to shape a vision for AI that “serves the many, not just the few”.

India recently jumped to third place in a global AI competitiveness ranking, surpassing South Korea and Japan.

Experts, however, caution the country still lags far behind the US and China in AI capability and requires international partnerships to advance.

Neither US President Donald Trump nor China’s Xi Jinping will attend, though both nations are sending high-level tech policy officials.

Analyst Seth Hays predicts summit talks will focus on governments establishing guardrails without stifling AI development.

“There may be some announcements for more state investment in AI,” Hays said, adding it may not be enough for India to integrate globally.

The Delhi gathering follows previous international AI meetings in Paris, Seoul, and Britain’s Bletchley Park.

 The Sun Malaysia