Remembering his first encounter with Narendra Modi six years ago, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he was surprised when the Prime Minister asked him to address his cabinet about artificial intelligence (AI).
“It was literally the first time any government leader, any national leader, asked me to address his cabinet on this particular topic. It was long before anybody was talking about Artificial Intelligence,” said Huang.
The Nvidia CEO was in conversation with Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) chairman Mukesh Ambani at the Nvidia AI Summit India, held at Mumbai’s Jio World Convention Centre.
Huang also recounted how, during their last meeting, he explained to PM Modi the concept of AI infrastructure and why it’s essential for every nation to have its own communication, Internet infrastructure, roads and energy. Huang said PM Modi said it makes complete sense for India to manufacture its own. “Modi ji said India should not just export flour to import bread. PM Modi said that AI has the ability to elevate the entire population of India,” Huang said.
He also shared that he told PM Modi that so few people in the world know how to program a computer. “Programming is not easy. Here in India, it has the largest population of programmers in the world. However, still, programming is not easy,” said Huang. “Most people don’t know how to program Python or C++ or Pascal or Fortran or Java, but everyone knows how to program an intelligence.”
According to Huang, the ability to program computers is available to a small population. “The ability to program AI is something that everyone can do. And if AI could be put into the hands of every citizen, it would elevate and put into the hands of everyone. This incredible capability you and I get the benefit from called computers. And this computer could now benefit everybody in society. PM Modi explained that back to me,” he said.
In response, Ambani said India is “very fortunate to have a visionary leader who believes not only in vision but in execution”. “The Prime Minister and I believe that his leadership in terms of converting India to a premier digital society has been vital and continues to drive activity at the ground level. So, it’s demography, it’s leadership,” said Ambani.
Ambani and Huang, who shared several light moments during the chat, also announced their partnership to build AI infrastructure in India. In September 2023, Reliance and Nvidia vowed to develop AI supercomputers in India and build large language models trained on its languages.
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