NEW DELHI: Some may see it as a sobering effect of the onslaught of China’s cost-belting DeepSeek in the global world of AI, but OpenAI founder Sam Altman – who just a year and a half ago dubbed India’s ambitions of building foundation AI models with limited budget as a “hopeless” pursuit – now believes the country can be “one of the leaders” in heralding technological leapfrogging.
Asked about his 2023 comment (made at a specially curated event organised by The Times of India), Altman – back in the Asian region following the DeepSeek launch at a fraction of cost compared to what OpenAI and others such as Meta, Google and Microsoft are spending – was more measured in his response, while emphasising that he was “quoted out of context”. “I think India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution. It’s really quite amazing to see what the country has done in embracing technology and building the entire stack,” he said during a fireside chat with IT & electronics minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
“India is an incredibly important market for AI in general, (and) for OpenAI in particular. It’s our second biggest market. We tripled our users here last year.”
He said India has a high degree of creativity, and should be a “leader” when it comes to developing reasoning models at efficient costs.
Ashwini Vaishnaw – while talking about the work under the India AI Mission and the need for developing local foundation models keeping India’s context, languages, cultural and regional nuances in mind – said the country has the capability to do cutting-edge work but at a fraction of costs being incurred by US companies.
“Our young entrepreneurs, our startups, our researchers, they are really, really focused on getting to that next level of innovation which will reduce the cost. Our country sent a mission to the Moon at a fraction of the cost that many other countries spent. Right. Why can’t we do a (AI) model which will be a fraction of the cost that many other countries do? So yes, innovation will bring that cost down. We think that kind of thing will come out in this process,” the minister said to an audience that included startup founders and those engaged in the field of AI.
Altman agreed that cost for a given unit of intelligence seems to have fallen by about 10x in the last one year. “What’s happening with the reduction in cost of AI models is extraordinary.”
The OpenAI founder, however, said that while certain costs around AI development have come down, training of models and doing frontier research on projects such as Stargate will still continue to be expensive.
“To stay at the frontier, we believe those costs will continue to rise on this exponential curve. But also the returns to increase in intelligence are exponential in terms of the economic value, (and) the scientific value that you can create.”
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About The Author
I’m JP, a 26-year-old from Odisha, India 🇮🇳 and the founder of newsxbyte.com 📰. I write articles and news on a variety of topics, including business, finance 💼, and exam updates 📚. With a passion for journalism and digital content, I strive to keep my readers informed and engaged with the latest updates and insights.
