India AI Impact Summit 2026: Shifting the AI Debate’s Focus
NEW DELHI: The India AI Impact Summit 2026, taking place from February 16–20 at Bharat Mandapam in the national capital, marks an important step in the evolution of global artificial intelligence (AI) governance. Positioned as the first global AI summit to be hosted in the Global South, this event signals a shift in how the world frames the AI debate—from a narrow focus on frontier risks to a broader, development-oriented agenda rooted in equity, sustainability, and inclusion.
Global Gathering in the Global South
The summit will feature participation from over 110 countries and 30 international organizations, including around 20 heads of state or government and nearly 45 ministers. Policymakers, AI researchers, industry leaders, innovators, and civil society are gathering in New Delhi for deliberations aimed at shaping the next phase of global cooperation on AI governance, safety, and societal impact.
Unlike earlier summits largely driven by advanced economies, India’s hosting emphasizes the growing assertion of emerging economies in shaping digital norms. New Delhi aligns the summit with India’s vision of “Sarvajana Hitaya, Sarvajana Sukhaya” (welfare for all, happiness for all) and the broader global principle of “AI for Humanity”.
From Safety to Societal Impact: The Evolution of the AI Process
The India AI Impact Summit is the fourth in a rapidly evolving international process on AI governance. The journey began with the AI Safety Summit hosted by the United Kingdom at Bletchley Park in 2023, leading to the Bletchley Declaration, signed by 28 countries and the EU. This focused on managing risks from frontier AI systems and established AI Safety Institutes in multiple countries. The process continued with the AI Seoul Summit in 2024, co-hosted by the UK and South Korea, which adopted the Seoul Declaration for Safe, Innovative, and Inclusive AI. In 2025, the AI Action Summit in Paris, co-chaired by France and India, broadened the conversation beyond safety to include sustainability, democratic governance, and inclusive innovation. Sixty-three countries and the EU endorsed the Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet.
India’s 2026 summit builds on this trajectory but goes further by placing development and the Global South at the center of the AI governance debate.
Three Sutras: People, Planet, Progress
The summit is guided by three foundational pillars, or “Sutras”: People, Planet, and Progress. The “People” pillar emphasizes the need for human-centric AI that safeguards fundamental rights and ensures that the benefits of artificial intelligence are distributed equitably across societies. The “Planet” pillar calls for environmentally sustainable AI development and deployment, recognizing the growing energy and resource footprint of advanced technologies. The “Progress” pillar focuses on advancing inclusive economic growth and technological transformation to ensure that AI-driven innovation contributes meaningfully to shared prosperity.
Seven Chakras: Turning Vision into Action
To operationalize these principles, India has structured the summit around seven thematic “Chakras”, each focusing on a core dimension of AI’s societal impact:
- Human Capital Chakra: Focuses on building scalable and inclusive AI capacity through international cooperation and skills development.
- Science Chakra: Aims to strengthen research ecosystems and accelerate scientific discovery by leveraging AI tools.
- AI for Economic Growth and Social Good Chakra: Explores how artificial intelligence can drive inclusive growth and deliver tangible developmental outcomes.
- Democratising AI Resources Chakra: Seeks to expand access to foundational models, compute infrastructure, and high-quality datasets, reducing barriers for under-resourced countries and institutions.
- Inclusion for Social Empowerment Chakra: Emphasizes ensuring that AI adoption leaves no community behind, particularly marginalized and vulnerable groups.
- Resilience, Innovation, and Efficiency Chakra: Centers on embedding adaptability, robustness, and reliability into AI systems.
- Safe and Trusted AI Chakra: Promotes transparency, accountability, and globally shared safeguards to build public trust in AI technologies.
Each chakra is co-chaired by partner countries, reflecting a deliberate emphasis on shared ownership and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Four working group meetings, including hybrid formats, have already been conducted for each chakra across different Indian cities, ensuring geographically diverse and implementation-focused consultations.
Push for Development-Centric AI Agenda
At its core, the India AI Impact Summit seeks to recalibrate the global AI discourse. While earlier summits focused primarily on managing catastrophic or frontier risks, India’s edition aims to foreground questions of access, equity, skilling, digital divides, and sustainable deployment—issues especially critical for emerging economies. The summit will culminate in the AI Impact Summit Declaration, synthesizing the outcomes of the seven working groups. This declaration is expected to build upon commitments made at Bletchley, Seoul, and Paris, while embedding India’s emphasis on People, Planet, and Progress.
As AI reshapes economies, labor markets, and governance structures worldwide, the India AI Impact Summit 2026 is an attempt to redefine who shapes the AI future and whose interests that future serves. It remains a work both in process and progress.
