Following Sam Altman, OpenAI Chief Economist Ronnie Chatterji to Visit India

A month after OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman's visit, the artificial intelligence platform's chief economist Ronnie Chatterji is scheduled to be in Delhi in the third week of March to meet with central government officials and other industry experts, according to sources.

The conference will also see the participation of 1,800 foreign delegates, people close to the developments told Outlook Business. 

It will include discussions on the new world order and healthcare, among other things said sources. The conference will be held at ITC Maurya, New Delhi. 

This comes at a time when tech majors are making special efforts to engage with India as the government is focussing on ramping up the country’s ability to capitalise on AI. It has already earmarked over Rs 10,000 crore to support the development of AI foundation models and applications by the private sector. OpenAI didn't respond to a query sent by Outlook Business on the matter.

Read: 22 of 67 AI Project Proposals Under IndiaAI Mission For Building LLMs: Vaishnaw

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had visited India on February 5 and met with startup founders and government officials. During his visit, Altman said, “India is an incredibly important market for AI, in general, and for OpenAI in particular.”Altman further added that India should be the leader of AI revolution, highlighting the country's remarkable adoption of technology and its development of a comprehensive AI ecosystem. During his visit, along with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Altman also met several start-up founders including Unacademy founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal, Peak XV Partners managing directors Rajan Anandan and Harshjit Sethi, Titan Capital’s Kunal Bahl, Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

India is intensifying its efforts to race ahead in AI by focusing on key objectives such as expanding access to computing, improving data quality, fostering homegrown AI innovations. 

On the first anniversary of the IndiaAI Mission, the government also launched several key initiatives such as IndiaAI Datasets Platform AI Kosh, IndiaAI Compute Portal for accessing GPUs and others. Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw also said that the country will have its own GPUs in 3 to 4 years. He said, “The IndiaAI mission that was started one year ago, has made 14,000 GPUs available now. To give an idea, our biggest super computer is 650 gpu and here it's 14,000 GPUs. Every quarter, we will add more compute and this will create the opportunity for everybody."

India is also focusing on the development of its own large language models. The minister revealed that 67 applications have been received for building a foundational AI model, out of which three to five will be selected. To add to it, 22 of these proposals, submitted under the IndiaAI Mission scheme to support AI initiatives with computing infrastructure, will focus on building Large Language Models (LLMs).