Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran on Friday said that it is “imperative” for India to focus on sovereign AI capabilities, warning that the country risks exposing itself to “digital colonialism.”

He said the advent of AI is a seminal moment in human civilisation akin to the invention of electricity, and it should not be seen just as another technology coming in.

“The countries that will lead AI will not only export AI, but they will be leaders in the future ways of thinking, and they will export that around the world. It’s so important that we (India) get it right,” he said at the Mumbai Tech Week event.

Sovereign AI or a particular country’s work in new technologies is also important for safeguarding culture and way of life, he stressed.

“If we don’t develop sovereign AI capabilities, we have a major risk of having all our activities, languages and cultures being processed by AI engines that don’t understand India. So it will take it to a different place, a kind of digital colonialism that we should avoid. It’s an imperative (to focus on AI),” he said.

“We must build the capabilities that are required, put in place the infrastructure and develop the knowledge so that we are totally independent in the way we deploy AI, develop, use it on our data,” the Tata Group chairman said.

Contrary to fears in the public imagination, AI will be a net job creator for a country like India, he said, adding that the nature of jobs may be different.

The developments in AI include work on chips, hardware ecosystem and also robots and humanoids, which will be run on Gen AI soon, he said.

Traditional advantages of businesses will matter very less going forward, he said, adding that what will matter most is the vision one has and how it is executed.

“Technological capability is required and we must use the right tools and systems. We must protect all our data and use it to develop India, he said, stressing that talent sovereignty is also important. We must regulate AI also as per your needs,” he said.

“Sovereign AI is about being a creator, but not about being a consumer,” he said, adding that consumer will help grow GDP.” If you want to be a creator, we need to have an India AI stack having aspects like a foundation layer which actually provides the compute infrastructure and also basic research that is accessible.

He welcomed the government’s initiatives like the AI mission as a step in the right direction.

Social sector challenges like education and healthcare can also be addressed using AI, he said. Chandrasekaran also assured that the Tata group will play its part in the ongoing advancements.