Industry Leaders Highlight AI’s Transformative Potential and India’s Leadership Role at India AI Impact Summit 2026
Industry Leaders Highlight AI’s Transformative Potential and India’s Leadership Role at India AI Impact Summit 2026
As part of the India AI Impact Summit 2026 various tech giants and industry leaders engaged in a wide-ranging fireside chat exploring AI’s transformative impact on industry, governance, healthcare, content authenticity, and global standards. The AI impact summit was inaugurated today by Prime Minister Sh Narendra Modi at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder and Chairman of Bharti Airtel, and Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and CEO of Adobe engaged in a fireside chat during India AI summit which focused on expanding role across sectors, from telecommunications and personalized medicine to education and digital infrastructure. Sunil Bharti Mittal highlighting how AI is becoming central to enterprise operations, he said “From our company’s standpoint, AI is becoming a truly integral part of how we operate, how we serve customers, build networks, and manage networks.”
While emphasising AI’s power to democratize access to information and noting India’s unique opportunity to shape global standards around data privacy, Shantanu Narayen said “India can play a leadership role, not just in what these models mean, but in how we think about data, privacy, security, and trust.”
Besides this, Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder and Chairman, Infosys, and Dario Amodei, CEO, Anthropic, engaged in a wide-ranging fireside chat exploring the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence, the challenge of diffusion at population scale, and the balance between innovation, democratic guardrails, and inclusive growth.
Dario Amodei, highlighting this gap between technological progress and societal impact, said, “There is a duality between the fundamental capabilities of the technology and the time it takes for those capabilities to diffuse into the world. In the Global South, the benefits of AI may be even larger than anywhere else, but that makes it even more important that we get safety, democratic governance and economic inclusion right.”
The conversation also addressed AI’s risks and opportunities for the Global South, including economic displacement, safety, and the need to demonstrate meaningful use cases to avoid public backlash.
A thought-provoking Fireside Chat featuring Yann LeCun, Executive Chairman, Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs, was also held. In conversation with Ms. Marya Shakil, Managing Editor, India Today, Mr. LeCun shared insights on the evolution of Artificial Intelligence, the distinction between intelligence and AI systems, and the long-term trajectory of technological progress.
The conversation opened with a fundamental question on whether AI is on the path to surpass human intelligence. Mr. LeCun reframed the debate, suggesting that the more immediate and meaningful transformation lies in AI’s ability to amplify human intelligence rather than replace it.
At #IndiaAIImpactSummit2026 in Bharat Mandapam, where India is hosting some of the greatest AI minds, I sat down with @ylecun for a fascinating conversation on the future of intelligence.
From “a country of geniuses in a data centre” to whether we will see the smartest mind in… pic.twitter.com/fNyJg1bvLT
Addressing India’s role in global AI innovation, Mr. LeCun said, “Long-term, innovation comes from countries with favorable demographics that means India and Africa. The youth are the most creative part of humanity.” He further stressed that education would become even more critical in the AI era. Describing AI’s transformative potential, he remarked, “Some economists say it’s the new electricity. I think it’s more like the new printing press. It’s about the dissemination of knowledge and the amplification of human intelligence.”
Industry leaders emphasized that India, with its scale, demographics, and transformative potential, is uniquely positioned to shape global standards and drive inclusive, human-centric AI innovation.