India AI Impact Summit: This is what we need to understand about the future with AI

Following the India AI Impact Summit, Professor Elena Gaura, Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research) and AI Lead at Coventry University Group and Yashodhara Dasgupta, Managing Director of Coventry University Group’s India Hub, share insights on the rapid evolution of AI and why international collaboration in its development is increasingly important.

When we look at where AI was five years ago compared to today, the pace at which it has evolved is remarkable. We’ve gone from pilot AI projects and limited usage concentrated in large enterprises to AI now being integrated into almost every industry. AI strategies and legislation have become national priorities and AI literacy is rapidly becoming a workforce skill expected by employers. A technology that once seemed futuristic and out of reach is now used in more than 150 countries, with roughly one in six people interacting with generative AI tools.

As we transition from the digital age into the age of AI, forums like the India AI Impact Summit provide an opportunity to reflect on how far we’ve come and to consider what comes next: the challenges, opportunities, risks and priorities that accompany worldwide adoption of one of the most transformative technologies of our time.

The development and governance of AI demand international collaboration

The global AI market is expanding rapidly, projected to soar from $189 billion in 2023 to $4.8 trillion by 2033 – a 25-fold increase in just a decade. With that growth come clear benefits - automation, increased productivity and economic expansion - but also significant questions. How will AI reshape jobs and labour markets? How do we prevent bias and discrimination? How can systems remain ethical and safe while also managing the considerable energy demands associated with large-scale AI systems?

The scale, speed and complexity of AI mean that no single institution holds the full range of expertise required to develop and govern it responsibly. While countries can and do advance AI independently, building AI that is safe, trusted and globally relevant benefits from shared knowledge, diverse expertise and coordinated effort.

AI is already perceived as a worldwide technology yet ensuring that it remains a technology we can enhance, rely on and trust will require countries to share knowledge, experience and expertise.

With 150 countries using AI, if each pursued entirely separate adoption paths, AI could quickly shift from a technology of opportunity to a technology of danger. Different rules, standards and safety checks could create inefficiencies and loopholes while influence over how AI evolves could become concentrated in too few places. Public trust could also erode if people begin to feel AI does not reflect or represent them.

AI that learns from us all

Just like other major technologies developed in the past, AI is most effectively advanced through a combination of research, standards and infrastructure from multiple countries. As AI is woven into different sectors, countries contribute specific strengths, making the process more balanced and robust.

Taking the UK-India collaboration as an example, the UK brings deep research capability and internationally recognised expertise in AI governance and ethical standards, while India offers vast engineering talent and experience in delivering large-scale digital systems efficiently. For years, we’ve worked closely with India through our Hub in New Delhi, myriad research and enterprise initiatives including recent mentoring of AI in healthcare innovators’ delegation, and we plan to deepen these bonds through our recently planned campus in GIFT City. The Summit was an opportunity to nurture this relationship further, meeting with senior stakeholders such as the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister and the AI Minister, to explore more ways to collaborate and integrate AI further into our education, research and knowledge transfer activities.

AI will only be as inclusive as the data it learns from, and right now, no single dataset can capture the full range of languages, cultures, socioeconomic conditions or lived experiences across the world. If AI is trained on a narrow slice of reality, it can make unfair or harmful decisions - such as hiring programmes favouring certain genders or universities, medical AI misdiagnosing patients from specific ethnic or age groups or public services overlooking vulnerable communities.

Global collaboration increases the likelihood that AI reflects the diversity of the societies they serve, ensuring professionals are trained to enhance and maintain systems that work for all, not just the countries in which they were built. Done well, international collaboration can also reduce technological dependency and help ensure that AI innovation benefits a broader share of the global population.

With more than 100 countries, more than 20 heads of state and leading AI executives coming together, the India AI Impact Summit demonstrates growing recognition that the future of AI will be shaped through collaboration as much as competition. The real test will be maintaining global collaboration at a pace that matches the rapid evolution of AI itself.