The Declaration for the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi has been signed by 70 countries so far, and the government said the number should exceed 80 on Saturday, when the final declaration is made and the summit officially concludes. The government extended the summit exhibition for one day to accommodate what it described as the overwhelming response from the public.
Addressing a press conference at the summit, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said there was broad consensus on the declaration and that all major countries – “the people who matter in AI” – had signed it.
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The declaration, although largely political and symbolic, represents an agreement between countries on how to develop and manage artificial intelligence. It is not legally binding but serves as a guiding framework for future policies and regulatory roadmaps.
The number of signatories to the New Delhi Declaration exceeds the number of signatories to the previous three summits. The Bletchley Park, Seoul and Paris conferences were attended by 30, 11 and 58 sites respectively. It is worth noting that at the Paris summit last year – which India co-hosted with France – both the US and the UK refused to sign. Washington has cited concerns about over-regulation. London felt that the declaration lacked sufficient clarity on global governance and did not adequately address the national security risks posed by artificial intelligence. The US is understood to have signed the New Delhi Declaration, a senior government official told HT.
Vaishnau described the summit as a “huge success” and the largest to date, noting that more than five thousand visitors attended over five days of exhibition and sessions. “Prime Minister Modi’s vision for MANAV – which is for humans, by humans and for humans – has been very well received. Every minister in every bilateral meeting has resonated with this, and everyone is happy that we have brought discussions on responsible and ethical AI to the forefront,” he said. The minister added that the margins of the summit resulted in investment commitments exceeding $250 billion for infrastructure and $150 billion for investment capital in the field of deep technology.
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At Friday’s protests by alleged Youth Congress leaders at the fair, Vaishnau said: “Thank you to the youth who are taking this seriously.” [Summit] Very positively, whatever small efforts the Congress made to derail the summit… the youth said very clearly that this was their show… they did not believe in the negative politics that the Congress was trying to do.
Without directly naming the Galgotias University incident – where a Chinese-made robotic dog was allegedly presented as the university’s own innovation, prompting the government to ask them to vacate the exhibition – the minister said there had been some “bad choices” at the exhibition and that the government had taken “immediate action” against those who “tried to diminish the good work done by startups, engineers and people in the field of artificial intelligence”.
Vaishnau also offered a preview of India AI Mission 2.0, expected to be officially launched within five months, saying it will be bigger with a focus on next-generation models, shared computing and safety. A senior IT Ministry official said India is targeting a total of 100,000 GPUs by the end of 2026, up from the current capacity of around 58,000 – with 20,000 GPUs announced during the summit itself.
