PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated the India AI Impact Expo here featuring over 600 high-potential startups and 13 country pavilions showcasing international collaboration in the AI ecosystem. He also interacted with startups participating in the expo. The Prime Minister visited various stalls and spoke with the companies participating in the expo. He was seen asking questions from company representatives to better understand what they are showcasing. The Prime Minister spent several minutes at various stalls while interacting with the representatives. The Expo brings together global technology firms, startups, academia and research institutions, central and state governments and international partners. Spread across 10 arenas covering more than 70,000 square metres, the Expo brings together global technology firms, startups, academia and research institutions, Union ministries, state governments and international partners. The Expo also features 13 country pavilions, showcasing international collaboration in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) ecosystem. These include pavilions from Australia, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Serbia, Estonia, Tajikistan and Africa. The Expo will host over 300 curated exhibition pavilions and live demonstrations, structured across three thematic chakras -- people, planet and progress. In addition, the Expo will feature over 600 high-potential startups, many of them building globally relevant and population-scale solutions.

 

These startups will demonstrate working solutions that are already deployed in real-world settings. The world’s largest artificial intelligence summit opened to packed halls and long queues, as tech moguls, industry leaders, policymakers, founders, and technologists thronged the venue for the conference, where India is set to push for widening access to AI and seek international agreement on global AI commons. With huge billboards around the city welcoming delegates, speakers and guests at the AI Impact Summit, Bharat Mandapam saw long queues much before the conference opened at 09.30 hours, signalling the interest in the subject and the conference. The enthusiasm was high despite the fact that the high profile speakers - from Sundar Pichai of Alphabet to Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic - haven’t even arrived in the country. Their sessions start not before Wednesday. Final two days of the Summit - February 19 and 20 - will see more than 20 heads of state and Government, including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, along with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, talking about the future of AI alongside business leaders and investors. A team of PTI reporters on the ground saw long queues outside the halls that are hosting different sessions. There were some logistics issues, but the conference was orderly and well organised. Multiple parallel sessions are happening at the same time and all of them are packed to capacity. From February 16 to 20, the summit will feature over 3,250 speakers and more than 500 sessions. “Sessions are packed. There are long queues, and once the halls fill up, doors are closed, which creates some hassle for those still waiting outside,” an enthusiastic participant said. “You have to be there for a session well in advance. One cannot float around from session to session like in other conferences.” Another person said an interesting line up of speakers is drawing huge crowds. “There is a lot of buzz around AI.”