Artificial intelligence is not just a technology race. It is also a meta narrative race.
The United States and China are racing to build the most powerful AI systems, while India is working to deploy AI widely across its economy and public services. The question is not merely who will build the most powerful models. It is: Which story will define how the world approaches AI development?
In the US, two distinct conversations coexist. On one side are Silicon Valley companies and venture-backed startups. Their dominant language is acceleration: scale models, build infrastructure, deploy widely, be the global leader. Billions of dollars are flowing into data centres, chips, and frontier research. AI is framed as transformative, economically decisive, and
strategically urgent.
On the other side is a strong academic pushback focused on AI’s supposed existential risk and alignment issues. Scholars such as Geoffrey Hinton, Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, and Eliezer Yudkowsky have argued that advanced AI could pose long-term dangers if misaligned with human values. Their concerns are not fringe. They are discussed in universities, policy forums, and in some of the most popular podcasts in the world. The language of “alignment,” “superintelligence,” and even “existential risk” has entered
mainstream debate.
This duality shapes the American AI narrative. It is both optimistic and anxious. It’s interesting that the same country that invests billions into scaling AI also funds research asking whether AI could one day outstrip human control.
China’s narrative looks different. Official discourse there emphasises strategic competition, national capability, and rapid integration. AI is integrated into education, manufacturing, public services, and surveillance infrastructure. Recent reporting has highlighted China’s efforts to introduce end-to-end AI literacy programmes in schools, with the goal of cultivating not just AI users, but future AI engineers. Alongside substantial investments in robotics and industrial automation, this suggests a deliberate effort to prepare the next generation to participate in and contribute to the country’s expanding AI ecosystem. The dominant framing appears less philosophical and more pragmatic. The question is not whether AI might someday surpass humanity, but how quickly it can be deployed to strengthen national power and efficiency.
India’s emerging story is different again. In policy statements and the ongoing AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, India largely frames AI as a development tool. It is discussed in relation to agriculture, finance, healthcare, multilingual access, public services, and gender inclusion. The emphasis is on using AI to unlock demographic potential and address structural gaps. Compared to American existential debates, India’s public tone has been more forward-looking and optimistic.
But here is the crucial point: tone often reflects position.
The US hosts many of the world’s frontier AI labs. Proximity to building the most powerful systems naturally sharpens concern about long-term risk. When one is closest to the engine, one feels its heat
more intensely.
India, by contrast, is closer to deployment challenges. Its immediate concerns are inclusion, scale, and economic growth. Its optimism reflects that developmental orientation.
This does not mean one side is correct and the other naĂŻve. It means each narrative reflects structural reality. The deeper question is whether India can afford to remain
purely optimistic.
India has announced plans to build sovereign AI capabilities, investing in its own models, building compute infrastructure, and expanding domestic data ecosystems. If this ambition succeeds, India will move from primarily deploying AI to actively shaping it. And once a nation begins building increasingly powerful systems, it will confront many of the same questions that animate the American AI debate: questions about alignment and control, about long-term risk, and even deeper uncertainties about intelligence, consciousness, and what it means to remain human in
the age of AI.
Listening to American AI warnings does not mean adopting American anxiety. As India moves toward developing sovereign AI models, it would be wise to engage seriously with the philosophical and alignment debates unfolding in the West by bringing new questions to the table along with new ways of approaching them. These debates are not expressions of paranoia alone; they are reflections of proximity to technological power. Working with them now would allow India to build strength without making
avoidable mistakes.
And perhaps the best place for these dialogues to start and if started, gain momentum is in our universities. Now more than ever (ah! if there ever was a cliché) India needs genuine interdisciplinary thinking, computer scientists, philosophers, public policy makers, economists, technologists, and thoughtful citizens beyond the technical elite working together, before the architecture of its AI future is locked in by default.
Students studying or building AI systems should wrestle with questions of consciousness, subjective experience, agency, dignity, automation, data sovereignty, and the values embedded in systems that will impact our financial institutions, medical diagnosis, legal decisions and much more. In essence, if India wants its AI future to be stable and sovereign, its intellectual ground must be equally robust.
The global AI story is being written as you read this article. America’s version warns of peril and power. China’s emphasises scale and strategic momentum. India’s speaks of inclusion and opportunity. The country most likely to shape the global narrative will not be the one that ignores risk, nor the one that freezes in fear. It will be the one that does not replace hard questions with easy answers. India has the opportunity to do exactly that.
(Disha K Daniel is the author of We Are What We Ask.)
