The buzz of artificial intelligence is in every ear. A loud and scary buzz even. If you are not into AI, you are going to be living in a different world altogether. A future dominated by those with AI. A world divided into two. Those with it and those without. The future gets cleaved into two once again. The haves and the have-nots.
What began as tentative talk in business newspapers a decade ago is a reality in our lives today. AI is bringing in efficiency unimagined. A task that took, say, 4 hours to complete gets done in a few minutes. AI tools of every kind are helping everything we do today, from the homework of a Class 3 student to a high-level presentation on the economy made to the prime minister. AI is already in our midst on our smartphones and will shortly be in us as AI-embedded beings letting the machine do the thinking for us. The future is a buzz that has begun.
As this buzz gets louder, it’s time for the world of technology to wake up and prepare for the needs of the yet-again divided world ahead. Countries such as India and all in Africa need to be more careful about this divide than many others for now. As one divide erases, another begins. As economic disparity shows signs of getting a wee bit lesser than before and as the educational divide promises to get bridged by a bit, a new technological divide threatens the world ahead.
Is it really a threat? Depends what you make of it. Depends also on whether you are on that side of technology where all this is happening, or on the other side of the fence where all this sounds like science fiction. The divide, deepening by the day, is represented by strange allies. Technology at one end and religion at the other. These two strange buddies are dividing the world by the minute.
Let me talk technology this time around.
The year gone by saw the world of tech get divided into a US camp and a China camp. There are two mindsets and two capitals of the technology world today. The rest of the world seems to be a wannabe world, wanting to snuggle into either of the two clusters that have emerged. Most developers, startup evangelists, thinkers, ideators and patent creators seem rather comfortable to cater to the needs, wants, desires, aspirations and even fantasies of these two cluster capitals. There is a ChatGPT world at one end and a DeepSeek world at another.
Year 2025 was most certainly the year of AI across the developing and developer worlds. Nvidia hit a $5-trillion valuation and catapulted AI as the hottest future property of the world. This made everyone in the space of AI chips and data centre infrastructure to salivate with glee. In more ways than one, this singular event has made a whole generation of youngsters across the world want a piece of the AI pie. Never mind if you do not belong by geography to the two AI clusters. You can aspire to be a part of this world—working from home, wherever home is. A whole host of piecemeal developers are emerging from every nook and corner of every country.
Most of this is happening at the top of the tech developers’ pyramid. I see it happening in Luanda in Angola and Lusaka in Zambia, just as I see it happening at the bleeding-edge of work out of Bengaluru, Pune, Gurugram and Bhubaneswar. Everyone, everywhere is contributing a bit to build the whole. The whole will belong to one of the two cluster capitals though—the US or China.
Let me congeal the discussion then. Where does India stand in it all? Does it have a place at the table already neatly set for two? Please do remember, as famously quoted by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently at Davos, “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.” India needs to aspire, plan for and ensure a place for itself in the noisy space of AI. We need to have our plans in place with a clear strategy of what we stand for. We need to establish a high ground for ourselves that defines a playing turf.
I am no Cassandra. But let me warn ourselves that it might be important for the world of Indian tech to be a bigger part of the whole. It just might be important to own more of AI and its myriad properties. More than we do today.
As of today, amid the hype of generative AI, we need to ensure it does not deteriorate into what I will christen as ‘de-generative AI’. India needs to establish its claim to be a player and participant of significance. A player branded to be at the frontlines of it instead of being an ‘India inside’ kind of participant.
If you examine the world of AI, there is an Indian-sounding name in almost every effort of the two capital clusters (more in one and less in the other). This is not enough. A whole host of ‘frontrunners’ in the world of AI (located within India and across the US or China) are extrinsically focused. Reminds me of the way the early Indian business process outsourcing and IT services industry went. We catered to the needs of the Western world. We built deep businesses with a focus on the outside world, rather than the inside—India. This is repeating today in the world of AI.
There is a privileged part of AI society emerging in India. We work out of Bhopal, Mysuru or Visakhapatnam. However, our business focus and consumption markets are extrinsic. We are excited. Our patents are growing, our tech manpower is growing and, importantly, our valuations are skyrocketing. We are part of a privileged set that works on a set of technologies that feeds the larger world of AI. Our focus remains limited by the capabilities we have built to cater to the AI-consuming world. The demand is huge and we are barely able to cater to it.
I do believe we need to understand deeply that there is more to AI than the mere algorithm (sorry for that insult, dear algo) and training technology interventions. Our thinking needs to veer to the realms of industrialisation as well. The physical infrastructure needs our attention as well, if not action. The $1-trillion AI and robotics complex in Arizona, US is the kind of action that signals the way countries are going to ensure AI-security for themselves. The race out here is for energy access, computing capacity and the sheer manufacturing prowess that the two cluster capitals are investing deeply in.
In India, it is the private sector that is focusing on the space more than anything else on the cards. The brute energy of this sector has been witnessed in the past in the realms of ITES, biotech and IT. If this sector, with hunger in its belly, can redefine our focus, India stands a good chance to grab some of the sunlight out there. In all this AI-build, there is short-termism in our midst. We have a yen to do a small thing, get a valuation, monetise it, get out and do the next small thing. We need to yank ourselves out of that mindset and act fast.
Within the context of AI industrialisation in India, our goals can be really big. How do we manage a complex democracy like ours? How do we manage poverty, hunger, illiteracy, health? And much more. AI in India needs a purpose statement. Not a target. Not a vision. Not a mission.
Harish Bijoor | Brand guru & founder of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc
(Views are personal)
(harishbijoor@hotmail.com)