In January 2025, India accepted France’s invitation to co-chair the AI Action Summit in Paris.

India’s Participation in the AI Action Summit

• AI Action Summit: In January 2025, India accepted France’s invitation to co-chair the AI Action Summit in Paris, scheduled for February 10-11.
• Past Summits: This summit, the third of its kind, follows previous meetings in the U.K. (2023) and South Korea (2024).
  • The first summit in Bletchley Park centered on the risks of emerging AI models, launching the U.K. AI Safety Institute (AISI).
  • The second meeting in Seoul broadened the conversation to include multilateral collaboration on AI risk management, engaging countries like the U.S., France, Singapore, Japan, and the EU.
• Focus of Paris Summit: The Paris summit will expand discussions to include innovation, public interest AI, the future of work, and AI governance.

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India’s, AI Safety and Global South

• For India, this summit represents a significant opportunity to enhance its global leadership on AI safety while amplifying the voice of the Global South on key AI issues.
• AI Safety Institute: India has played an active role in global AI discourse, particularly on AI safety. Recently, India’s IT Minister announced plans to establish its own AI Safety Institute.
• India’s Leadership for the Global South: India has also championed the cause of the Global South in multilateral AI forums. During India’s G20 presidency in 2023, the group endorsed a “pro-innovation regulatory approach” to balance AI innovation with necessary safety measures.
• Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI): Additionally, in December 2023, India hosted the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) meeting, emphasizing equitable access to AI resources and infrastructure for developing nations. These efforts have positioned India as a leading advocate for AI governance that benefits all nations, particularly those in the Global South.

 Strategic Priorities for the Global South at the Paris Summit

• To make the most of its co-chair role at the Paris summit, India should focus on three key strategic priorities to advance the interests of the Global South:
• Democratizing Access to AI Resources: India should advocate for broadening access to essential AI resources across the entire AI value chain. 
  • Example Set by India: India’s domestic initiative, which provides a common computing facility with over 18,600 GPUs and 40% government subsidies, sets an example. 
  • Efforts to Extend Beyond Computing Hardware: Efforts should expand to include data sets, cloud platforms, foundation models, and development tools. 
  • India should also support distributed computing, safety innovations like watermarking, and open-source AI models like DeepSeek
  • Cross-Border Collaboration: Additionally, India must advocate for flexible cross-border AI tech transfers while ensuring safety standards.

• Prioritizing AI Use-Cases for the Global South: India must push for the creation of a framework that identifies AI use-cases tailored to the unique contexts of the Global South.
  • Reasons: This will ensure that AI applications address local needs rather than imposing foreign solutions. 
  • Examples include early disease detection systems adapted to local healthcare infrastructure, personalized learning platforms designed for diverse educational settings, and agricultural tools like weather prediction or soil analysis suited to regional farming practices.
  • The establishment of an AI use-case repository after the summit could guide the Global South in identifying and prioritizing its AI needs.
• Contextualizing AI Risks for Developing Nations: India should highlight the need to address AI risks and safety measures specific to the Global South. Developing nations face unique challenges, such as the cultural impact of large language models trained on Western data.
  • India should advocate for gathering evidence on AI-related harms in these regions to shape effective risk mitigation strategies. A repository documenting these harms could help guide future regulations for the Global South.

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Path Ahead

• As co-chair of the Paris AI Action Summit, India has the opportunity to advance the key priorities of the Global South in the evolving AI landscape.
• By focusing on equitable access, context-specific use-cases, and tailored safety measures, India can strengthen its position as a global leader in AI governance. 
• Additionally, India’s successful co-chairing of the summit could position the country as an ideal candidate to host the next AI Action Summit, further solidifying its role as a bridge between AI superpowers in the Global North and emerging nations in the Global South.

Conclusion

India’s active participation in the Paris AI Action Summit is a crucial opportunity to shape the global AI agenda in ways that benefit the Global South. By advancing priorities such as democratizing access to AI resources, prioritizing region-specific use-cases, and contextualizing AI risks, India can cement its leadership role in global AI governance, fostering an inclusive dialogue on AI that empowers developing nations.

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