NEW DELHI: Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, on Thursday hailed the rapid advancements witnessed in India in the field of AI, stating that the South Asian country is well-positioned to lead in artificial intelligence.
Delivering his keynote address at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Altman said he was amazed to witness the country’s leadership in advanced AI.
“Incredible… I was last here a little over a year ago, and it’s striking how much progress has happened since then. We’ve gone from AI systems that struggled with high school-level math to systems that can do research-level mathematics now and derive novel results in theoretical physics,” the OpenAI CEO said.
“It’s also striking how much progress India has made in its mission to put AI to work for more people in more parts of the country. India’s leadership in sovereign AI, building on infrastructure, SLMs and much more, has been great to watch. India, the world’s largest democracy, is well-positioned to lead in AI, not just to build it, but to shape it and decide what our future is going to look like… This is an extraordinary statement to make, and of course, we could be wrong, but I think it really bears serious consideration,” he added.
Altman described India as a key market OpenAI, pointing out that over a hundred million people in the country use ChatGPT every week.
“More than a third of them are students. India is also the fastest-growing market now for OpenAI Codex, our coding agent that works to help people develop software faster and better,” he informed.
Visualising the future, the leading tech CEO said a superintelligence would one day become capable of doing a better job as the CEO of a major company than any executive or doing better research than our best scientists.
He predicted that based on the current trajectory of advancement in the field of artificial intelligence, the world may be only a couple of years away from witnessing early versions of true superintelligence.
“If we are right, by the end of 2028, more of the world’s intellectual capacity could reside inside of data centers than outside of them,” he said.
Altman stressed that democratisation of AI is the only fair and safe path forward, which will also ensure that humanity flourishes.
“Centralisation of this technology in one company or country could lead to ruin,” he warned, adding, “many people need to have a stake in shaping the outcome. The development of AI has already held many surprises, and I assume there are bigger ones to come.”
Altman also stressed the urgent need for regulating this fast-evolving technology, and suggested that the world may eventually need an institution similar to the nuclear watchdog IAEA to supervise advanced AI systems and enable rapid global response mechanisms.
The OpenAI CEO admitted that there would be some disruption in jobs due to AI, but added that the newer jobs would emerge as people transition.
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“The other side of this coin is that current jobs are going to get disrupted as AI can do more and more of the things that drive our economy today. It’ll be very hard to outwork a GPU in many ways…We’re somewhat less concerned about the long-term future. Technology always disrupts jobs; we always find new and better things to do. The people of 500 years ago would have thought that our current jobs often look silly, like ways to entertain ourselves, and create stress. And the people 500 years from now, hopefully, will look at us, hopefully, look to us like impossibly rich people playing games, trying to find ways to pass their time. But we should all hope that they feel much more fulfilled than we do today,” Altman said, describing his view of the future.
Agencies