#334 Abhishek Singh: The $1.2 Billion Plan to Turn India Into an AI Superpower

A couple of decades ago, India and China were roughly equivalent. Both were hungry. Both were opening their economies. Both were sending brilliant young scientists out into the world. Then China hit the accelerator. It built labs the size of small airports. It repatriated senior researchers. It handed them compute, and it treated AI like a national moonshot. India, meanwhile, rode a different wave. IT services and outsourcing, while its English language advantage made leaving easier than staying. The country produced world class engineers, but it didn't build a world class research ecosystem to hold them. That gap mattered. Without deep investment, labs, compute, mentors, long term research culture, India became a training ground for the global tech industry rather than a proving ground for its own. Some of the brightest minds left and never looked back, going on to lead Google, Microsoft, and many other tech titans. This was never a talent question. But India is finally treating AI as infrastructure, building national data centers, national data repositories, and funding AI research in a bid to catch up with China. I'm doing a series of podcasts on that question. Why did India fall behind after starting shoulder to shoulder with China? What did decades of under investment cost them? What will it take to build labs that people return to, not escape from? And with The US and China so far ahead in research output, compute budgets, industrial adoption, can India become something more than a secondary player? In the first of these episodes, I sit down with the head of India AI mission, Abhishek Singh, to talk about India's national program COSH data platform to fostering homegrown talent and creating centers of excellence across the countries. If you're curious about how one of the world's largest and most diverse nations is tackling the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence, both at home and on the global stage. This conversation is not to be missed. Could you introduce yourself to listeners in The United States and alike the world about who you are and what your role is about India AI mission and what India AI mission is. I'm a civil servant, carrier civil servant with the almost thirty years of experience of having worked in diverse roles across the country, various states. I work worked in the extreme Northeastern state of Nagaland. I worked in Uttar Pradesh. I worked in government of India for long ten years. I primarily spent a lot of time, in fact, in, in the field of technology. In fact, I may say that in almost every role that I have had, I will work on projects which, deal with using technology for improving governance. In my present role where I'm leading, the AI mission along with my additional role as additional secretary in the ministry and also director general of National Informatics Center. I'm responsible for implementation execution of India's $1,200,000,000 AI mission. And, this is my fifth sixth year in this ministry, …