Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy defended India’s information technology (IT) services industry amid criticism from some quarters that the mindset is not letting it build foundational large language models (LLMs). Murthy argued that rather than blaming the services sector, the nation should focus on building solutions atop existing LLMs.
"Which area has [India] invented? Please give me an example," he said in an interview with Moneycontrol. He pointed out that India's strength lies in adapting foreign innovations to meet local needs.
A debate is ongoing in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector about whether India should build an indigeneous LLM. While some argue for a homegrown model tailored to India’s needs, Murthy, his Infosys peer and Aadhaar architect Nandan Nilekani, and others believe adapting existing models is more practical due to limited data infrastructure and high development costs.
According to Murthy, India’s culture of oral rather than written knowledge has limited the development of large data repositories, which are crucial for LLMs.
“Without big data, AI has no value. Large language model doesn’t make any sense,” Murthy said on the sidelines of the Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) awards held in Bengaluru on November 14.
India’s regional languages are also a barrier in fields such as science and technology, where English, thanks to the nation's colonial past, dominates the terminology.
Also read: Indian mindset not oriented towards problem definition, solving: Narayana Murthy
LLM is an advanced AI system trained on vast amounts of text data to understand and generate human-like language. It can answer questions, write text, and assist with tasks by predicting words based on context.
In October, Nvidia Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jensen Huang echoed similar views. He said unique challenges are posed by local languages such as Hindi in developing LLMs, citing multiple dialects that change every 50 kilometres as a significant hurdle.
Murthy highlighted India’s history of adapting imported technologies across industries—ranging from automotive to renewable energy—since independence. He argued that rather than building technologies from scratch, India should concentrate on using powerful AI tools already developed in countries like the US.
"At this point in time, my view is India...should use the wonderful inventions that have happened in AI abroad and see how best to adapt it to India for our own benefits,” he said.
The idea has found backers even in corridors of power. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) secretary S Krishnan suggesting that building an LLM from scratch may not be worth the effort and instead advocated for adapting existing models to serve specific sectors.
Murthy defended the contributions of the IT services industry, highlighting that it has created millions of jobs, earned foreign exchange, and provided critical solutions to global clients. “We should all be grateful to the IT services industry; we should all salute them,” he said.
Rather than questioning its contributions, Murthy argued that the sector has proven its value in building complex applications.
Pointing to education as the key to building India’s innovation capacity, Murthy proposed bringing in primary and secondary educators from developed nations to train Indian teachers in critical thinking, problem-solving, and observation skills. “Unless you do that, you cannot say we are not inventing the next thing,” he added.
While acknowledging India’s innovation limitations, Murthy commended initiatives such as Aadhaar and Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), which adapt foreign technology to benefit India.
Also read: Indians are good at applying ideas generated elsewhere: Narayana Murthy
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