Sam Altman not the last word on India's AI aspirations: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Union minister for electronics and information technology  Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said OpenAI chief Sam Altman is not the last word on India’s artificial intelligence aspirations and there will be many areas where he will not agree with the founder of the immensely popular ChatGPT chatbot.

A controversy erupted after Altman said during an event in Delhi that it would very hard for a small startup to develop foundational artificial intelligence (AI) models.

“Sam Altman is a bright man who certainly has done a lot of work in OpenAI. And he has to be respected for his work. But we should not consider him anything other than an important man in AI. He's certainly not going to be the last word on what India's aspirations for AI are going to be. He certainly doesn't have an understanding of India's capabilities in AI,” Chandrasekhar Moneycontrol in an exclusive interview last week.

“We will take Sam Altman's comments with the respect that it deserves. But to assume that everything he says or does is exactly what Indian startups are going to do is to miss the point. I think there are many areas that Sam Altman and I are never going to agree on,” the minister said.

During the event, Altman was asked whether an Indian startup with $10 million in funding and a few engineers could build a foundational large language model (LLM) in AI. The OpenAI founder said that the chances were “hopeless”.

In response, Tech Mahindra CEO CP Gurnani tweeted, “OpenAI founder Sam Altman said it’s pretty hopeless for Indian companies to try and compete with them. Dear @sama, From one CEO to another..CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.”

This stoked a controversy as Indian techies took Altman’s comment as an affront to their capabilities. However, the OpenAI chief later clarified that his response was quoted out of context.

"This is really taken out of context! the question was about competing with us with $10 million, which i really do think is not going to work. but i still said try! however, i think it’s the wrong question," he tweeted over the weekend.

"The right question is what a startup can do that’s never been done before, that will contribute a new thing to the world. i have no doubt indian startups can and will do that! and no one but the builders can answer that question."

The minister told  Moneycontrol the government was keen on supporting the development of AI capability by Indian startups and the broader tech ecosystem in the country — and this might mean partnering with OpenAI itself.