India AI Impact Summit 2026 set to put Global South at forefront

5-day event begins today amid push for democratising AI resources

The five-day India AI Impact Summit 2026, which begins here on Monday, is set to become the first such gathering aimed at amplifying the voice of the Global South -- its concerns and expectations -- in the debate across the world on artificial intelligence.

 

Government officials said the AI Impact Summit will put forth India’s perspective, alongside that of several other developing nations, on “democratising AI resources for social and economic growth,” with an emphasis on making the technology more human-centric.

 

Officials noted that this approach marks a shift from earlier AI summits, which largely reflected priorities of developed economies, particularly their focus on safety. The first of those meetings, the Bletchley Park summit in the United Kingdom in November 2023, was explicitly framed as the AI Safety Summit.

   

Deliberations there focused on risks posed by frontier AI models and on regulatory frameworks governments might adopt to ensure the technology delivered societal benefits while mitigating harm. The second Safety Summit followed in South Korea in May 2024. It was succeeded by the AI Action Summit in Paris in February 2025, where sustainability emerged as the central theme.

 

The theme for the summit that India is hosting has transitioned from “safety” to “action” to “impact”, an official noted. “Over the past three years, the ambit of the impact of AI has expanded from worrying about just safety and action taken to issues such as innovation, future of work, development, democratising AI, social good and the Global South.”

 

A senior Ministry of External Affairs official said India’s priorities diverge from those of Europe. “Our perspective, unlike that of Europe, which is focused on security and safety, is how to use technology as a tool to empower our people -- to increase inclusivity and deliver more efficient governance, especially to the remotest parts of the country.”

 

For the summit, discussions are expected to centre on equitable access to AI for developing economies, another official said. Participating nations and companies are also likely to examine how users can be better factored into AI deployment strategies.

 

The agenda may include AI startup models and policy playbooks that could benefit Global South economies but have yet to scale, alongside debates on skilling and reskilling initiatives aimed at cushioning potential job displacement while positioning AI as an economic opportunity.

 

Achieving those goals, however, presents structural challenges. The United States remains home to many of the companies leading the production, manufacturing, dissemination and consumption of graphics processing units (GPUs), the high-performance chips essential for training advanced AI models.

 

China, meanwhile, has pursued workarounds to technology and GPU sanctions while embracing a more open approach to AI models. Its most advanced system, DeepSeek R1, is claimed to have been developed at a fraction of the cost of rivals such as ChatGPT and has been open-sourced for broader experimentation and scrutiny. No significant gaps have yet been publicly confirmed.

 

For India, which has consistently advocated on behalf of countries with limited AI infrastructure, a key test will be crafting a declaration that calls for more equitable distribution of high-cost assets such as GPUs, while balancing commercial realities, including the interests of US technology companies.

 

The summit, to be held at Bharat Mandapam from February 16 to 20, will convene policymakers, industry leaders and technology innovators. “The key message we want to send is that whatever happens with AI needs to be human-centric and inclusive,” IT Secretary S Krishnan said. “There needs to be democratic access to AI resources, and it needs to be done in a way where people are at the centre of this process.”

 

As many as 20 heads of state and government are expected to attend, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Lula da Silva, along with ministerial delegations from more than 45 countries. The summit’s theme is “People, Planet and Progress.”

 

Since September, seven thematic working groups, co-chaired by representatives from the Global North and Global South, have been developing proposed outcomes, including frameworks for AI Commons, trusted AI tools, shared compute infrastructure, and sector-specific compendiums of AI use cases.

 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who will travel to India for the summit, has warned against AI becoming the preserve of a handful of advanced economies. “It would be totally unacceptable that AI would be just a privilege of the most developed countries or a division only between two superpowers,” Guterres told PTI. “It is absolutely essential that AI becomes a universal instrument for the benefit of humankind.”

 

He added that India, as a rapidly rising economy with expanding global influence, is well positioned to host such discussions. “India is the right place to have this summit and to make sure that AI (is) being discussed in depth, in all its enormous potential and also in all its risks, but that AI belongs to the whole world and not only to a few.”

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s senior aide Maxim Oreshkin will lead a large delegation to the AI Impact Summit.

 

The next AI Summit is scheduled to be held in Switzerland.

 

---

(Inputs from Archis Mohan and PTI)