The India AI Summit 2026, inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, featured two compelling keynote addresses that positioned artificial intelligence not merely as a technological breakthrough, but as a defining force shaping economies, societies, and the human condition.
Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak opened the session by reflecting on the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence and the responsibility accompanying its growth. Recalling the origins of the first AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, Sunak stressed the need to balance innovation with safety, noting that while AI’s transformative power is unprecedented, it will never replace the essence of human experience.
Highlighting the speed of technological adoption, Sunak pointed out that while the telephone took 75 years to reach 100 million users, ChatGPT achieved the same milestone in just two months, illustrating how the pace of change is rewriting history. He emphasized India’s unique position in this transformation, citing the country’s digital public infrastructure, Aadhaar, UPI, and health accounts, which have laid the foundation to scale AI solutions for 1.4 billion people. India’s expanding startup ecosystem, growing base of unicorns, and innovations such as Sarvam AI, he said, demonstrate that the real race in AI lies not only in frontier breakthroughs but in widespread adoption.
Addressing global challenges, including food security, healthcare access, and education gaps, Sunak said AI has the potential to deliver solutions at scale. From empowering farmers and supporting maternal healthcare to enabling personalized learning, he argued that AI can “raise the floor for humanity” and create unprecedented equality of opportunity.
The technical dimension of the summit was further strengthened by Surya Ganguli, Professor of AI, Neuroscience, and Physics at Stanford University, who presented a scientific roadmap for advancing intelligence. Ganguli highlighted a paradox in modern AI: despite rapid progress, there remains a limited fundamental understanding of how AI systems work, while the human brain, shaped by 500 million years of evolution, remains far more data- and energy-efficient.
Ganguli outlined three key frontiers for advancing intelligence: data efficiency, energy efficiency, and the melding of brains and machines. On data efficiency, he described new theoretical breakthroughs explaining neural scaling laws and showed how smarter data selection can convert slow power-law improvements into faster exponential gains. On energy efficiency, he contrasted the brain’s 20-watt energy use with AI systems that can consume millions of watts, proposing a reimagined technology stack inspired by biology and physics, leading toward what he termed “quantum neuromorphic computing.”
He also detailed emerging work on brain-machine integration, including the creation of digital twins of neural circuits to decode perception, simulate disease states, and write precise neural patterns back into the brain. From decoding visual perception in mice to controlling epileptic seizures, he said this convergence of AI and neuroscience signals a future where intelligence is better understood and therapeutically powerful.
Together, the two keynote addresses framed artificial intelligence as an immediate and transformative force. one emphasizing global governance, adoption, and human impact, and the other laying the scientific foundations needed to move beyond today’s AI models.
