Former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday positioned India as the global frontrunner in artificial intelligence deployment, arguing that the next phase of the AI race will be decided by scale, infrastructure and real-world impact — areas where India already holds a decisive advantage.
Speaking at “AI for All: Reimagining Global Cooperation,” an event on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit hosted by Carnegie India in association with the Observer Research Foundation and other partners, Sunak said India’s edge lies not merely in innovation but in its ability to operationalise technology at population scale.
He pointed to India’s digital public infrastructure — Aadhaar, UPI and Ayushman Bharat — as foundational “distribution rails” that allow AI solutions to reach hundreds of millions rapidly, securely and inclusively, a capability few countries possess.
Contrasting India’s approach with the West, Sunak said AI debates in Europe and North America are increasingly shaped by anxiety over jobs and economic disruption, while India has embraced adoption with greater public confidence and institutional readiness.
Warning that AI’s expanding knowledge capacity must be matched with human judgment, Sunak said “knowledge is not the same as wisdom,” calling for strong security institutions and government oversight to build trust.
As Washington and Beijing compete to shape global AI norms through regulation, capital and compute power, Sunak’s remarks underscored a strategic reality: India’s advantage lies not in choosing sides but in setting standards through scale. In a world split between US innovation dominance and China’s state-driven tech model, India’s population-scale deployment and digital public infrastructure position it as the decisive third pillar in the emerging AI order.
