Conversation: 01

Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to invite on stage speakers for our next remarkable panel discussion. I would like to invite our esteemed speakers, Her Excellency Paula Bogante Zamora, Minister of Science and Technology, Costa Rica. His Excellency Omar Al -Olamah, Minister of State for AI, United Arab Emirates. Mr. Sriram Krishnan, Senior Policy Advisor for AI, White House. This discussion will be moderated by Dr. Samir Saran, President, Observer Research Foundation. Could I please request our esteemed panelists to kindly come on the stage?

Good afternoon. We have 20 minutes and we have a fantastic panel. So I’m going to dive straight into the conversations. we’ve been here through the day and we’ve heard a few ideas and and propositions and i’m going to basically ask each one of you to elaborate from your vantage points on some of those propositions the first of course would be what does impact and diffusion mean where you sit the opportunity and the challenges of ai are of course different and differentially experienced so from your vantage point what does impact mean from your national perspective and a global perspective and of course the diffusion opportunity and maybe i can start with sriram the diffusion opportunity that we are sitting on today

thank you for having me it’s such an honor to be here i want to congratulate you know prime minister modi and everyone for just having this fantastic event and it’s been such a privilege to be here these last few days i know we have 20 minutes i’ll keep this very short With the Trump administration, when we got into office about 13 months ago, we decided President Trump immediately charted us with coming up with an AI action plan. And it came from a sense of positivity and optimism when it comes to AI. And in July last year, we set three priorities for what we believe America should follow. One, we want to build infrastructure. So President Trump has done a lot of work on making sure we can build data centers, making sure that we build grid capacity, making sure that we can build infrastructure, while at the same time, without having regular Americans see their power and energy bills go up.

So that’s infrastructure. There’s a lot more there, but in the interest of time, I’ll just keep going. Number two is innovation. At the heart of AI are amazing entrepreneurs and builders, a lot of whom you saw on stage here this morning. And we want to be sure that they can continue building these amazing models and applications and chips and everything else they do. So we’ve been doing a lot of work there. And I think most essentially, we’ve been trying to make sure they’re not encumbered by red tape and bureaucracy. So President Trump signed an executive order in December, which tries to stop onerous legislation from getting in the way of innovation. And third is we want to share this technology with our allies and the rest of the world, whether it is our advanced chips from NVIDIA or AMD or Google, or whether it be the models and applications on top.

We want to share our technology with our partners all over the world. And we’ve been doing a lot of work there. And we’ve been spending a lot of time on that. So those are the three things that we have been focused on.

Great. Minister Alulama, let me turn to you. Again, a powerhouse in the region, powerhouse globally now. AI, a big feature of your government, a big priority in the bilateral as well between UAE and India. How do you see the opportunity, Minister, in terms of both the ability to empower your own people and region, but also others around the world, the role UAE can play here?

Thank you very much. And I must say that it’s very impressive to see India convene the world on such an important subject like artificial intelligence. And also hearing His Excellency Prime Minister Modi this morning emphasize how India wants to not just be a champion for the global south, but the champion for transparent AI, the champion for open source systems. And that is reassuring, especially in a world where we have haves and have nots. And if I’m going to reflect that on the UAE, we are a country that is blessed to be part of the haves, right? We are a country that has infrastructure that is able to build artificial intelligence. And that is incredible. We are able to diffuse it across society.

So if you look at Microsoft’s AI diffusion report, the UAE ranks first globally. locally in the UAE the main focus is AI for quality of life improvement if you look at it some countries are looking for economic gains others are looking for political advantages we are looking for quality of life improvement because we believe that this will translate into every other domain in the future if you look at externally we were at a certain point of time in our history have not so we were a country that wasn’t as rich as it was pre -oil and in that we understand the need to give back and the need to invest alongside and the need to create with others and you see that the UAE played a big role in building data centers and empowering people with AI literacy and you know being able to use AI across Africa Latin America and many other continents as well I think we’re going to continue to do that

Minister I want to ask you one short question you were the first minister of AI in the world

yes

like do you have bragging rights now like does everyone come and like bow to you

and actually you know what saddens me is I expected by 2026 that every country will have a minister of AI and we still haven’t gotten to that point yet but thank you

and I know that Minister Alulama became a minister before he did his military service so that’s something all of us should think about you they picked the right man for the right job so I think well done to the leadership in UAE Minister Zamora another small country another beautiful country again another country that could really transform itself using the power of AI and of course there are headwinds that you need to encounter so from your vantage point how do you assess this opportunity this challenge perhaps this transformative engine

so the one thing is that we need to you know talk about and have clear for everyone to understand is that the reality from countries that have passed like your excellency was saying is way different from the ones that have not right or don’t have weak i come from a small country 5 .2 million people which is laughable from india standards uh small economy one of the smallest countries in latin america and we have done a lot of things better than other latin american countries the truth of the matter is depending on who do you compare we’re way lower than we or we have much more to improve than what we thought we had to do ai has one of the things that ai is bringing to up to our attention is we have to do a diagnosis as to where do you stand on the road of improvement economy improvement and you have to face reality in the sense of this is where you need to focus on and that’s what ai is bringing up to our attention so and this is a homework that every country has to do and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do it and we have to do that are way ahead of the others, they need to look at us and say, how do we help you with the AI implementation?

And by the way, what do I mean by that? 70 % of 190 plus countries have implemented 5G. You cannot think of AI without 5G. So what are we doing to help the countries that are

– In the government folks. Right.

What are they doing? How can we help them? When we started working on an AI strategy, four countries out of 33 Latin American Caribbean countries had an AI strategy, four out of 33. So what did we do? We spoke with the OECD. We’re working on an AI toolkit to help every country understand where do they stand. So again, what is AI doing to us is bringing to our attention, where do you stand in the AI race and what do you need to do to keep improving? But we’re not going to be able to get to the AI race. That’s the ideal point unless – the countries that are ahead of us, look down and say, this is where we should be helping.

More than just bringing AI solutions is how do you build the base to then start implementing AI solutions?

You raise a very important point. How is global cooperation going to play out in this domain? How are partnerships going to serve humanity? I think that’s one of the key principal conversations we want at this forum, right? So let me ask you. Let me start the second round with you on what is the kind of multilateralism that is likely to emerge and how can countries with 5 million population, but by the way, let me just tell you, Minister, between India and Costa Rica together, we are 1 .5 billion people. So don’t worry. It’s big numbers. So we will negotiate together. Now, my question to you is, what kind of multilateralism is going to work for countries such as yourselves?

Is it going to be through a regional grouping basis? Is it going to be through? Is it going to be through like -minded? Is it going to be through a regional grouping basis? countries, how is the multilateral arrangement of the future going to look like?

I think a little bit of both. You know, you said India and Costa Rica. Let’s talk about Latin America and the Caribbean. If we combine all 33 countries, we’re talking 650 million people. Then the number sounds attractive, right? So I do think that we need to like -minded countries get together within regions and start negotiating or deciding what the path is going to be. And we can do it with countries from other regions, say Asia and Costa Rica or Africa and Latin America, not Costa Rica. The truth of the matter is we’re sharing some common problems, some countries, small economies, for example. What do we need to do to make sure that we keep moving forward and we call the attention on the countries that are, you know, in the upper floors, let’s say.

Catch their attention, right?

Minister Alulama, you’ve been in this forever, so tell me how is the World Government Summit and the big events that you host, how do you think partnerships are going to emerge in this particular technology domain, in this highly polarized world people are being forced to choose how do we retain the ability to be able to build bridges across

so this has evolved as a discussion and things have changed drastically over the past nine years since I was appointed, historically no one was talking about you know trying to confidentially keep what they have for themselves and not discuss it with others or trying to create groups of you know influence whether it’s on the left or on the right but with the advent of LLMs and very powerful AI systems that can do things that historically were not even seen to be possible in the next 10 or 20 years, we’re seeing a shift in narrative the UAE’s approach has always been the world needs a convener the world needs a place where you can have dialogue and I think what is going to harm the world is ensuring that there isn’t dialogue and there are silos even at the height of the Cold War there were dialogues on nuclear proliferation there were dialogues on the danger of nuclear weapons and there were countries like Switzerland at the time where the world could come and talk about what is acceptable and what is unacceptable and we believe that the UAE can play that role it can convene the world it can come and put the topics of importance and it can ensure as well that we can magnify the voices not just of the countries in our region but as our Excellency the Minister said countries in Latin America and the Caribbean countries that today are unrepresented in this dialogue we attend the G20 meetings and there was a process on the Hiroshima Accords on AI and we are very happy to be here and we are very happy to be here and we are very happy to be here and we are very happy to be here And in that you can see it was only the 20 countries or 25 countries that were there.

The AI dialogue needs to be a global one. It cannot be one that is limited to one geography or one set of countries.

Shriram, let me take from a U .S. perspective, from a Trump administration perspective, you are investing in building partnerships, whether it is a critical minerals group or the Paxilica that’s gained much currency in recent conversations. How is multilateralism of the future for you?

Before I get to that, I think I want to emphasize something which His Excellency, the Minister mentioned a moment ago, which is Prime Minister Modi just outlined a totally compelling vision for what AI can mean to all of humanity. And I think it was so compelling in so many themes. And I also want to particularly congratulate the Sarvam team for their launch yesterday. I think it is quite inspirational. terms of what a small team of entrepreneurs have accomplished in such a short time. And as somebody who kind of nerds out on these things, I found that very, very impressive. I think speaking for us in the administration, we approach this from a spirit of partnership.

We want to see the world leverage and use our technologies. You saw many of the companies represented here on stage today, whether it be our advanced semiconductor chips, whether it be people building models, or whether it be people building applications. You can kind of choose who you want to work with. If you want to build a model, you’re going to be training on NVIDIA or AMD. If you want to, you know, you’re probably going to be your use case. And if you look at the action plan, we have put a lot of emphasis into making sure we can can export our AI. Just to give you one example, we entered into this AI Accelerator Partnership with the UAE back in May last year as part of President Trump’s visit.

And I think that’s kind of the template for many more to come. You mentioned PacSilica. I think the announcement was done today. I think it’s going to be formalized tomorrow. That is another partnership headed up by my dear friend Jacob Helberg in the State Department, which is about how do we ensure supply chain security and do it with all of our allies. And we’ve had many amazing countries sent on to it, and I think it’s a great effort. So what I would emphasize is, you know, we are trying to approach this with the spirit of partnership, where we want to bring our technologies to our allies and to kind of really work with them together on all things AI.

So let me pose the final question to this panel. As we reach our 20 -minute mark, I thought we should. perhaps look back at the first session this morning when I thought President Macron made a very interesting speech which had a number of issues that we could all take, we could actually have a debate on. You know, for example, one of the questions he raised was the nature of regulation. And I think the implicit in his speech was the question of the balance between innovation and restraint in some sense, right? So maybe as we conclude this conversation from all of the panelists, we could start with how do we see the future of AI regulation? And maybe Minister Alulama, I could start with you this time, then come to you, Minister Zamora, and end with you, Sriram, on regulation and what do you think about it?

So let me start with you.

So are you commenting on President Macron’s statement on regulation?

No, no, no. I’m just saying he kind of very early morning, he told us about some questions that we need to answer on safety, guardrails, care, care, empathy. That’s the question, right? So what are we designing it for?

So there isn’t a one model fits all when it comes to regulating technology. And I think as well, there isn’t a country that’s going to get it right from the get -go because they are all knowing. And we’ve seen that through many iterations of different regulations that were put in place and then revoked and removed. In the UAE, our view is simple. First, we actually like to engage. So we engage aggressively with the different partners, whether it’s from the private sector or other countries as well. Second is we like to build up gradually rather than go from extreme to extreme. And I’ll give you a simple example. You’re going to realize that when ChatGPT came out, in a short period of time, there was a country in Europe, I’m not going to mention the country, who announced that they’re banning ChatGPT.

In the same month, the cabinet in the UAE announced that we are going to be in brief. We’re going to be embracing RLMs and ChatGPT completely. and getting as many people in the country to use these tools as possible. And this sounded counterintuitive. You know, why are they banning it and these guys are jumping on board? Our assessment was that this tool is going to be a net positive for the society. Now, with that, if there are negative ramifications, the way that we’re going to approach it is gradual restriction rather than going from zero to 100. That’s how the UAE approached it. And we typically like to work with others to ensure that our regulation as well are compatible with other, whether it’s blocks or countries.

So you see that there are certain regulations that are compatible with India. Many regulations are compatible with the US. And maybe Her Excellency the Minister will say this. For countries of our size, we can’t bully large companies. And I don’t think we can afford, and it’s true, we can’t afford to swing left and right on the pendulum just because we’re trying to threaten them. Our approach should always be approaches of cooperation, of collaboration, and also of continuous proactive assessment of the impact of artisans. I’m just going to end with one final example. Today, the conversations that social media is about, right? So this is one of the things that we are hearing. And my question is, it took social media.

So we’ve had social media for 15 years now. It took us 15 years to reach to that point. And today, the only answer is that we restrict. There has to be constant assessment and proactive engagement with the private sector, while at the same time putting constant restrictions, you know, slowly but continuously to ensure that you don’t have to go to the extreme. I know that Europe is very wise when it comes to them putting the regulations for themselves. Our approach in the UAE is to try to engage and see what comes out.

Very diplomatic. But, you know, I think. Your point is well taken. Regulation is an art form and not necessarily the exercise of a Hammersmith, you know, policy option for the government. Very well taken. Minister Zamora, your view.

So regulation, the way I see it, depends on the view of the beholder. Who are we talking about? Because I hear regulation and innovation. Sure, how much money the five big tech companies invested last year on innovation? Over $200 billion, which is also the amount of money India is planning on investing for the next two years. Costa Rica’s GDP is $100 billion. So that gives you a perspective. Innovation, what’s the average percentage invested on innovation per GDP for OECD members? 2 .7 % of the GDP. Costa Rica, 0 .30%. Latin America, 0 .65%. We’re not even at 1%. So we say, let’s regulate innovation. Let’s start innovating first, and let’s then regulate it. So as His Excellency was saying, it’s not a one -fits -all sort of formula.

And then I go back to… We have to think when talking about regulation, what is each country’s reality? How about data? Let’s talk about data. Data privacy, data governance. How about the value of data? Because some of the countries, that’s all we can provide because we have to still, again, we’re building, working on building blocks. How about the value of data, which at the end of the day, it’s what algorithms need to become better. How about talking about regulating data and the value of data? Those are things, again, it depends on the perspective of each country and what value can we provide, can we put on the table? And let’s discuss that because we can talk about ethics.

We can talk about governance. We can talk about the goal of AI, which should always be the improving of humans’ lives. But what is the reality of each country nowadays when thinking about data? I mean, of AI.

Shriram, let me turn to you for the final word. The prime minister this morning, Indian prime minister. This morning said very eloquently. that AI is India’s destiny. And in some sense, that would define the governance approach for the opportunity that it offers us, right? So now in that backdrop, in the American tradition of building entrepreneurial value, how do you, where do you tilt on this debate?

Well, I think for us, we’ve always sort of seen AI through a lens of optimism and positivity in terms of what it can do for American citizens and the world at large. When it comes to regulation, there are some things which we absolutely do care about. We care about protecting children. We care about protecting IP rights. We care about making sure that AI doesn’t have censorship or doesn’t have ideological biases embedded of any kind. But having said that, what we are trying to battle right now with this executive order is we don’t want a patchwork of regulation. We are still very, very early when it comes to AI. And we don’t want to hinder innovation by having bureaucratic red tape or having in America 50 different states with 50 different rules that entrepreneurs have to deal with before they launch something.

So that’s been our approach. So it’s more about coherence and predictability and certainty that allows innovation. So, yes, we need clarity in regulation so that entrepreneurs can do what they do best.

I think this has been a fantastic conversation. 20 minutes of pure content. So thank you very much to all three of you for coming to India, for sharing your wisdom with us. And, of course, best of luck for your AI journeys. And hopefully our paths will intersect and we will build a prosperous future together. Thank you very much.

Please join me in applauding this. Thank you so much, Your Excellencies, for this insightful and enriching conversation. I thank Her Excellency Paula Poganty Zamora, His Excellency Omar Al -Olamah, Mr. Shriram Krishnan, and also Dr. Samir Surin for moderating this conversation. Ladies and gentlemen.