A doctor analysing the human anatomy using AI. AI is increasingly applied in India to health consultations, creative writing, and bureaucratic functions, but adoption faces societal bias, weak digital infrastructure, and reliance on foreign technology. (Image for representational purposes)
| Photo Credit: Vithun Khamsong/Getty Images
Recently, I used AI as a substitute for the urologist. Recently, a friend also collaborated with AI to write a short story. And then India had its AI Impact Summit 2026, which should have used AI instead of babus to avoid the ensuing reputational damage.
I have consulted a urologist since autumn 2024, which is always a setback of Rs 4,000 for an unsatisfactory visit because he is robot-like and seems impatient for me to leave. He prescribed two medicines. Lately, feeling better, I thought of stopping the medication but did not want to visit him, so I consulted AI.
Amazing! AI comprehensively (and patiently) explained what ailed me, what my medicines were meant for, and suggested, with a caveat of following a doctor’s advice (that I ignored), that I stop one of the medicines and watch for about three to six weeks. It’s been 10 days, and I’m now a believer. I’ve always had deep respect for physicians, as my late father was one, but now I don’t despair about their eventual replacement by AI; I welcome it.
Then there’s my friend who asked me to read his and AI’s short story. He has both fiction and non-fiction books to his credit, but this effort was not engaging, to say the least. It might be the fault of AI, but in my experience, a tool is only as effective as its wielder. It had the necessary ingredients: topicality, urgency, action, and clean language. Yet it lacked the essential element: storytelling magic.
I’ve never worried about AI replacing novelists or filmmakers, despite the avalanche of videos on social media lately of giant cats battling Godzilla or Ultraman (and even the stupidly LOL video of King Kong and Godzilla funkily dancing). AI might solve things faster and more efficiently than humans, but the fact that it can’t make mistakes means it can’t be creative. (As Picasso said, art is knowing which mistakes to keep.)
It would be a quantum improvement, on the other hand, if AI replaced India’s bureaucracy or judiciary. Yes, it was lately reported that even AI in India carries societal prejudices like casteism, and that may take time to sort out, but I think the benefits of rapid and efficient governance will outweigh any temporary hiccups.
Obviously, one cannot talk about AI as a vague promised paradise, or parrot general homilies about how India can benefit from AI as Prime Minister Narendra Modi did during the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi this week. He might as well have declared that India will produce great literature.
Modi’s fine and lofty words—“human-centric progress”, “inclusive development”, “transformative role”, “robust digital public infrastructure”, “vibrant digital public startup ecosystem”, and “cutting-edge research”—are so generalised that they could be applicable to anything. We need specifics. Yet the country’s politics is so dysfunctional that no one can call him out. His face is plastered all over Delhi and the summit venue, as it was during the G-20 summit in September 2023 (who remembers that now?). Other recent AI events (like the AI Action Summit in Paris or the World AI Conference in Shanghai) have not showcased their politicians.
The Summit’s first day was chaotic: no crowd management; no Wi-Fi, ironically; poor logistics. One fellow from Bangalore found his costly “wearable AI” that he was to exhibit, stolen (and a day later, recovered); it happened after he was directed by security to clear the hall for the Prime Minister’s visit. Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had to publicly apologise for the mismanagement, but it isn’t clear whether it was to the public or to the Prime Minister, who must have been enraged.
Yet the Summit was an urgent national need. Chief Economic Advisor V. Anantha Nageswaran revealingly said the private sector, academia, and policymakers had to “act now” lest India falls behind in the AI; he characterised the current AI integration as “drift” that required a clear commitment to “aligning technological advancement to mass employability”.
For India, this sounds utopian. The country keeps moving towards a centralisation of power, where even Cabinet Ministers don’t take the initiative. It is why we have one flaccid budget after another; it is why no one can take a call on what to do about advancing Chinese troops; it is why we have been forced to stop buying Russian crude or accepting an unequal trade deal with the USA. It is not a conducive environment for innovation.
NVIDIA boss Jensen Huang did not come. India needs him because NVIDIA’s chips are central to the development of AI in India. Renting the chips’ processing power is costly if one wants to build something bigger than specific projects. India needs an AI infrastructure, or “digital plumbing,” but Modi and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu seem to think that building energy-intensive data centres is the answer. True AI development requires more. Data might be the new oil, as Mukesh Ambani has said, but are we going to be a nation that makes content or a nation that makes the apps that use such content?
It is likelier that we will be like Galgotia University, a private institution in Uttar Pradesh, which bought a Chinese robot for $ 2800 and allegedly tried to pass it off as its own—a professor even claimed it was part of their Rs 350 crore ecosystem, until Galgotia had to admit the robot was purchased. Vaishnaw, tellingly, had highlighted the same robot on social media. After the uproar, Galgotia was told to vacate the Expo.
AI is being developed by American academia, specialising in conceptual and engineering breakthroughs. We, however, are historically a nation of traders, not manufacturers. From Indian campuses, we hear less of innovation and more of savarna angst. Did I mention that my friend, the short story writer and I each used an American AI app? I despair that India will continue to be a nation that relies on American and Chinese technological dominance to keep its poor and unemployed distracted. I hope I’m proven wrong.
Aditya Sinha is a writer living in the outskirts of Delhi.
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