Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi writes that the world is at a defining technological moment, marked by the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, where global leaders, innovators, and young people gathered to re-envision how artificial intelligence (AI) should evolve. He argues that AI belongs alongside transformational inventions like fire, writing, and the internet — but what will set this era apart is how quickly change can unfold and how broadly it can affect societies worldwide. Modi stresses that AI must be human-centric, designed to enhance human welfare and not reduce people to mere data points in machine systems.
To make AI genuinely serve people, Modi introduces the M.A.N.A.V. framework (Moral, Accountable, National sovereignty, Accessible, Valid) as guiding principles for ethical, transparent, inclusive, and lawful AI governance. He highlights real-world AI applications in India — such as the Sarlaben digital assistant helping millions of dairy farmers and multilingual AI tools offering weather and market data to rural producers — as examples of technology empowering diverse populations, especially in the Global South. Modi emphasizes that digital innovations should reach everyone, not just elite users.
Modi also calls for trust and safety to be built into AI systems, advocating for authenticity standards like watermarking for synthetic content to counter deepfakes and misinformation. He underscores the importance of child safety in AI engagement and argues that technology yields its greatest benefit when shared rather than guarded, urging open platforms and collaborative development so that young innovators across the world can contribute to making AI safer and more human-centric.
Looking ahead, the Prime Minister predicts an era in which humans and AI systems will co-create, co-work, and co-evolve, generating new professions and opportunities just as the internet did. He stresses the need for skilling, reskilling, and lifelong learning to prepare India’s vast youth population for this transformation and positions India as a global hub for inclusive AI innovation that serves both national development and wider humanity.
