Global AI Conclave: Govt should play an enabling role, set up AI ministry, says Inception COO Koshy

Global AI conclave

The Indian government should play an enabling role in building artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem in the country taking a cue from the United Arab Emirates, Ashish Ipe Koshy, chief operation officer (COO) of Inception, a subsidiary of UAE’s G42, has said.

“The (Indian) government should play an enabling role. I can talk about the UAE. The UAE back in 2017 or 2018 announced the first ministry of AI. Back then, AI was a buzzword and we had a ministry looking to set regulations and understand how to deploy AI across sectors,” Koshy said at the CNBC-TV18 and Moneycontrol’s Global AI Conclave in Bengaluru on November 22.

“They were identifying the sectors where AI needs to be applied and healthcare was nominated as the first sector for it… It helped us a lot. It was like an incubation by the government that helped turbocharge a lot of startups and at that time G42 was a startup. I think that kind of a vision is important.”

Also read: Global AI Conclave: AI infrastructure is key to next digital economy, says Inception COO Ashish Ipe Koshy

G42 is an Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence (AI) company launched in 2018. Before taking over as COO Inception, Koshy was the chief executive officer of Inception Healthcare.

Inception specialises in advanced AI models and applications and recently launched its latest large language model (LLM), JAIS 70B.

In 2024, India and UAE had signed a memorandum of understanding on artificial intelligence, as part of this G42 working on building large data centres in India focussed on AI workloads and one of the country's largest supercomputers.

It also plans to launch its Hindi LLM, called Nanda, and is engaged with startups and enterprises for its adoption in the country.

In the UAE, G42 is known for creating Condor Galaxy, the world’s largest supercomputer for AI training, and Jais, the world’s first open-source Arabic LLM.