Davos 2025: Andrew Ng urges India to focus on AI applications

AI pioneer Andrew Ng at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20

Artificial intelligence pioneer Andrew Ng emphasised the importance of India focusing more on AI applications rather than solely on building foundational models.

In an interview with Moneycontrol at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Ng advocated for a dual approach but pointed out that prioritising applications would yield the greatest economic benefits.

“India has so many talented people, so many great companies—it has the resources to both train foundation models and build applications,” he said.

However, he pointed out that the cost of training foundational models is falling rapidly, making it easier for many research labs to catch up with what was cutting-edge technology just a few years ago.

Ng further noted that foundational models rely heavily on applications for economic viability. “The only way for businesses training foundation models to do well is if the application layer turns out to be even more valuable,” Ng, the founder of DeepLearning.AI, Managing General Partner at AI Fund and Co-Founder of Coursera, said.

Ng's current viewpoints align with his statements from last year at the WEF, where he told Moneycontrol that numerous opportunities exist in the application side of AI.

"There are so many more opportunities in applications of AI to healthcare, financial services, IT consulting, and so on. These have huge opportunities that relatively very few people are working on," Ng had told Moneycontrol in 2024.

Ng's comments also resonate with the viewpoints of leading Indian tech experts, such as Aadhaar architect and co-founder-cum-chairman of Infosys Nandan Nilekani.

"Indian path in AI is different. We are not in the arms race to build the next LLM, let people with capital, let people who want to pedal chips do all that stuff... We are here to make a difference and our aim is to give this technology in the hands of people," he said.