NEW DELHI, Feb 19: India is well-positioned to lead the world in artificial intelligence (AI), said OpenAI chief Sam Altman on Thursday highlighting country’s rapid progress and called for the democratisation of the technology.
Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Altman said, “It was incredible to see India’s leadership in advanced AI. In just over a year, AI systems have moved from struggling with high school-level mathematics to being able to do research-level mathematics and derive novel results in theoretical physics.”
“Hundred million people in India use ChatGPT every week with over a third of them are students. India is the fastest-growing market for Codex, OpenAI’s coding agent,” he said.
Speaking with the media at the event, Altman said, “India’s AI opportunity is amazing, and it’s great to be here. This is one of our fastest growing markets in the world maybe it’s the fastest at this point. It’s certainly the fastest for Codex. There’s more than 100 million people. They use ChatGPT every week.”
He said India is well-positioned to lead in AI. Not just to build it, to shape it and decide what our future is going to look like.
Altman also mentioned that the industry may be only a couple of years away from early versions of true superintelligence.
The path forward lies in the democratisation of AI, as concentrating the technology in the hands of a single company or country could have damaging consequences, he said.
He also noted that the world needs a body similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency to coordinate efforts on keeping a handle on the extremely fast development and evolution of AI in nearly every field. Such a body should be able to rapidly respond to changing circumstances, he said.
Altman also announced the launch of the ‘OpenAI for India’ initiative with the overall goal of this initiative is to build infrastructure, strengthen skills and create local partnerships to develop AI solutions tailored for India.
(UNI)
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