Sam Altman calls India building ChatGPT-like tool 'hopeless'. Tech Mahindra CEO says 'challenge accepted'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on Twitter at the start of this week that he would be going on a six-nation tour that included India and true to his word, he came to India.

At an event, Altman was asked by former Vice President of Google in India and South East Asia and current venture capitalist Rajan Anandan whether India can build an artificial intelligence tool such as ChatGPT.

"Sam, we have got a very vibrant ecosystem in India, but specifically focussing on AI, are there spaces where you see a startup from India building foundational (AI) models how should we think about that, where is it that a team from India (should start) to actually build something truly substantial?," Anandan asked at an event organised by The Economic Times.

"The way this works is we're going to tell you, it's totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models you shouldn't try, and it's your job to like try anyway. And I believe both of those things. I think it is pretty hopeless," Altman said, in reply.