Responsible AI for the Planet: India’s Moment at the AI Impact Summit 2026

Next week global experts, industry leaders and policy makers will be in India for the AI Impact Summit at Bharat Mandapam during February 16-20. This is the first global AI summit being organized in the global South. The summit focusses on the three Sutras (foundational pillars) – People, Planet and Progress.

What do we understand by Artificial Intelligence (AI) ? Artificial Intelligence involves machines capable of imitating certain functionalities of human intelligence including such features as perception, learning, reasoning, problem solving, language interaction and even creative work (UNESCO).

The rapid development of generative AI, machine learning and digital twins has seen AI transforming all aspects of human life – education, healthcare, agriculture, government, logistics, manufacturing, security and entertainment.

I illustrate a few examples of Indian developments in AI. Recently in a pre-AI summit interaction with startup founders and the Minister of Education, ten new startups illustrated their AI based tutors, personalized teaching, innovative healthcare, education products, English language learning tools, assessment and feedback.

Many had found niche products and were enabling students to learn and acquire skills outside the conventional classrooms. Some were tapping global markets.

The use of AI tools is also affecting the pedagogy in the classrooms, examinations and assessments. At IIT Delhi we created a committee and evolved a set of guidelines for ethical and responsible use of AI for students and faculty.

These guidelines need to be dynamic and have to evolve along with developments in technology. During our recent curriculum review we mandated integration of AI into all curriculum,  so that every graduate has training in AI.

An example of AI development for communities is the Adi Vaani project at IIT Delhi (along with other institutes) funded by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs to establish an AI language ecosystem for low resource tribal languages. Adi Vaani provides speech to text, text to text, speech to speech translation and OCR based digitisation in four tribal languages – Gondi, Bhili, Santhali and Mundari. This enables linguistic inclusion and permits meaningful participation of tribal communities in modern knowledge systems and digital services while preserving local tribal languages.

Researchers at IIT Delhi have developed Deep Flood as a part of One India AI mission - An AI accelerated platform to map floods using synthetic Aperture Radar and Deep learning. An advanced graph-based AI framework for analysing brain imaging data has been developed to improve the diagnosis of major depressive disorder and strengthen mental health diagnosis.

AI based preventive cancer detection, AI for genomics based integrative medicine are pilots that show the potential of AI in health care. One of our successful startups has developed geospatial tools with AI based change detection for border areas for defence applications.

AI clearly is a potentially disruptive technology – changing the way we live our lives, do our jobs and structure our society. When we think about AI we need to think about its interplay with human intelligence. Should AI systems think and act like humans or should they act rationally? What should be their moral compass? How should they make choices?

These are difficult questions and take us into the realm of cognition and philosophy. Nobel laureate Herbert Simon proposed the theory of bounded rationality. This states that humans cannot make perfectly rational decisions. This is due to two limitations – cognitive limits – it is impossible for the human brain to consider a large number of options or inputs. Social limits- due to personal and social ties among individuals.

According to him we opt for satisficing – decision making based on limited information that is good enough. A machine on the other hand can consider a very large number of inputs in a short period of time. In many cases AI may lead to an improved solution.

The history of human development has seen the development of tools and techniques to enable and support human comfort – we have had an anthropocentric focus. It is imperative for us to channelize and develop AI that integrates with inclusive and sustainable development for improving the human condition.

Despite the rapid developments in technology the world still faces problems of hunger, disease, climate change, extreme events, insecurity. Our understanding of nature, the physical boundaries and limitations of the environment and changes caused by human activity are limited. We need to think of responsible AI with a human centric focus.

The integration of AI and human intelligence can be a way forward. We need to set guidelines and regulations for the development and use of AI, while ensuring and protecting individual rights and privacy. The AI Impact Summit 2026 provides India with an opportunity  to  demonstrate leadership in inclusive, innovative use of AI for People, Progress and Planet.