I’ve just come back from Hyderabad, India, where Aspen International Partners and Ananta Centre gathered Aspen affiliates from across the world to talk about AI, democracy, and leadership. A beautiful, chaotic, fascinating city full of rich history and culture and one currently sitting as India’s epicenter in the global conversation that is AI and frontier technology. Throughout our conversations I couldn’t help but find myself seeing parallels between the metropolis around us and the technology we were discussing.
Equity. In many ways, India was the perfect place to have this discussion: a country rapidly developing, building, and expanding. The skyline towering around us was less than 10 years old and the booming tech sector in the city now claims the second biggest Google campus outside of their US HQ and hosts Microsoft, Amazon, and many others – including, as we were very proudly told, the world’s largest startup incubator. But in other ways, the country exemplifies one of the largest questions AI, and frontier technology more broadly, opens. From the window in the beautiful hotel we were gathering in, I was looking across a busy highway to see a small collection of tin-roof huts where children played with scrap metal on the dirt tracks between buildings. A defining question around AI is who will reap the rewards from this technological boom and who could lose out. Whether this technology will raise all boats as a democratising force or further concentrate power into the hands of certain countries, companies, and groups. Concerns about a ‘permanent under-class’, one or two countries hosting god-like technology whilst the rest of us are forced to be in their serfdom, and the huge economic impacts of a technology our systems aren’t ready for are now top of mind for many and prominent in policy discussions. Hyderabad, itself a city benefiting from technological economic boom, still hosts huge inequality and this tension is visible in peoples’ everyday lives.
Diffusion. In the UK tech sector, India is often heralded as a modern leader in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). The ‘India Stack’ has been admired the world over as an example of how government can support the development of the digital rails needed for greater public access to data and services. In shops across Hyderabad, QR codes stood almost universally on counters, and with one quick scan you could navigate the UPI system and your goods would be paid for. And yet, I have never struggled with a visa system more. I was rejected twice, with no reasoning, and found myself navigating a website that seemed to have been built in 2007 and physically would not function on Safari. The uneven distribution of technology and services is not new and I’m not sure things will be any different with AI. AI not only has a jagged frontier of capability, but one of diffusion. How this technology spreads through an economy is largely what will dictate how useful this tech is to everyday people and how it spreads through countries could be a defining feature in dictating the world order of the 21st century.
Power. As someone with an English accent (although I felt compelled to constantly remind people I am, in fact, Irish…) it’s a little strange being in India. We were taken on a wonderful tour of a stunning regional royal palace that has, over its rich and storied history, housed many British royals during – and after – British colonial rule of India. The Victorian inspiration of architecture and the black and white photographs of viscounts and duchesses lining the marble staircase were spoken about as historical artefacts; yet we live in a world today where conversations of colonialism are present and growing. US hegemony around the globe is wavering following decades of presence and influence in many countries, whilst China’s soft-power politics has been playing the long game. What happens when one, or both, of these superpowers has super-intelligence? What happens when these countries can, arguably, do whatever they want? Or how do we view the influence of these Big Tech giants that now boast bank accounts larger than some nation states and seemingly have more diplomatic power than many? What happens if they continue to make ultra-powerful AI and must respond to the incentive structures that all companies do? A lot of your answer will likely come down to your belief in human nature or your theory of choice on the geo-political world order, but these are valid questions to be asking. For what it’s worth, I found many of my – incredibly smart – workshop peers to be very pessimistic when discussing these questions.
Politics. Finally, the question of what world this technology is being built in. India, like many other countries around the world – including my home of the UK – is going through a period of increasing dissatisfaction with government, status quo politics, and – sometimes – rising populism and ‘strongman’ leadership as a response. Technology is not separate to politics; it is subject to it and informed by it. AI has become the central technology in discussions of an ‘arms race’ between the US and China, in which many other countries are being forced to take sides, and there are increasing concerns around what happens if an authoritarian government has control of this technology. India now holds an increasingly influential seat at the table for world politics and some of the decisions its citizens and political leaders make will play a huge role in dictating the country’s future with this technology.
Coming away from this visit I feel deeply honored and humbled to have spent time discussing such large questions with such a brilliant and diverse group of people. Our debates were long, complex, and ran over into lunch breaks and late-night karaoke. But the fact we have spaces like this to exchange ideas and think about building new partnerships and alliances feels just as important today as it did with Aspen’s founding in 1949. I’m incredibly grateful to Aspen UK for putting me forward for this opportunity and look forward to far more engagement with the group from Hyderabad.