AI Impact Summit: Global North Meets Global South, Rewriting Tech Power Balance

While the Global North is still desperate to hold on to its influence based on the colonial mindset, the focus will be on the Global South, which will shape the next stages decision making and cement human development. In this context, India’s efforts in shaping the AI agenda for the Global South will reverberate for decades to come.

The Global North can no longer discriminate against the Global South on what rightfully belongs to the emerging economies, and the New Delhi AI Summit has been a testimony to that fundamental issue. The summit played a crucial role in building a human‑centric and sensitive global AI ecosystem. In the words of PM Modi, “history shows humanity has always turned disruptions into opportunities, and today presents another such moment to transform disruption into humanity’s greatest opportunity.”

Global Aspirations 

A fundamental gap persists between global aspirations and the reality on the ground. The global AI divide continues to widen, with AI resources and capabilities concentrated among select nations and corporations. This concentration fundamentally limits the development of social, cultural, and linguistically contextual AI solutions, constraining their potential to accelerate progress toward our collective development goals, especially for the Global South.

The Summit has charted a path towards a future where the transformative power of AI serves humanity, drives inclusive growth, fosters social development, promoting people-centric innovations that protect our planet. It also seeks to amplify the voice of the Global South, ensuring that technological advancements and opportunities are shared broadly, not concentrated in a few regions.

AI Accessibility  

While technology in the past created divisions, AI must now be accessible and within everyone’s reach. As the future of AI is discussed, aspirations and priorities of the Global South must be placed at the centre of AI governance—and this was exactly the message from India at the Summit that was attended by several leaders, including those from the Global North.

India’s efforts have paid dividends as leading figures from the technology and philanthropy sectors at the Summit, which also called for the democratisation and inclusive development of artificial intelligence to prevent deepening global divides while delivering broad prosperity, particularly in the Global South. The leaders at the Summit converged on the view that AI must close gaps rather than widen them, expand opportunity rather than concentrate power, and remain anchored in human values, democratic principles, and purposeful global leadership.

Creating Roadmap

It is important to create a roadmap that ensures AI’s positive impact through timely, well-intentioned, and correct decisions.  Ethics have always been central to human progress, but with AI, the scope of unethical behaviour is unlimited. And here, even the AI and tech majors must be made accountable and must be mandated to carry a major responsibility to focus not only on profit but also on purpose.

It is in this context that Modi offered three suggestions -- AI training must respect data sovereignty and be based on a trusted global data framework; AI platforms must keep their safety rules, clear and transparent and that AI must be guided by clear human values.

India's Strategy 

India’s AI strategy is rooted in democratisation, scale, and sovereignty, and the country has outlined a comprehensive approach across the five layers of the AI stack, applications, models, compute, talent, and energy, emphasising real-world deployment in healthcare, agriculture, education, and public services.

Aspirational India has a major role in the global journey of Artificial Intelligence. Under India’s AI Mission, 38,000 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are already available, and 24,000 more will be added in the next six months.

India is also providing its startups with world‑class computing power at highly affordable rates. India’s direction and vision for AI are clear—AI is a shared resource for the welfare of humanity.

Simultaneously, AI's rapid proliferation across society is creating new challenges that demand urgent attention: disrupting traditional employment patterns, exacerbating existing biases, and driving exponential increases in energy consumption. These developments underscore the urgent need to move beyond aspirational frameworks toward concrete, measurable impact that addresses both AI's promise and its perils.

The message at the Summit was clear-- though AI is advancing at an unprecedented pace, its benefits will only reach everyone if guided by deliberate choices toward openness, inclusion, responsibility and cooperation.

(The writer is a commentator on geopolitics. Views are personal.)