The greatest benefit AI offers is its power to democratize education and business, breaking down financial barriers and fostering inclusive growth across society. — Alok Singh
The AI (Artificial Intelligence) impact summit, which concluded recently at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, featured the who’s who of the so-called disruptive technology sector. A disruptive technology challenges the status quo. It creates a forest of usage cases. The scale spreads like wildfire depending upon urgency, utility, necessity, productivity, and many other factors that govern operations strategy.
The AI is a necessity for an aging world, offering hope as we harness the demographic dividend over the next two decades, reassuring the audience about positive prospects for aging societies.
The aging world needs AI, as there are more senior citizens than youths. The working population pays taxes, and the aging population receives government support. The AI is a necessity as it has utility in factories that rely on a twenty-four-hour labour supply. Dark factories have emerged as an alternative to address the shortage of youth in such factories. Factories are called dark because they operate without lighting or air conditioning. The AI is customized to do manufacturing work. The AI can perform many hazardous tasks, for example, firefighting and mining. The AI that spreads like wildfire is in the services sector. It’s on our handhelds and laptops.
The AI can supplement students’ learning, enhance patient care, and be used for much more in daily life. Judicious use is expected everywhere, whether that be an individual, an institution, or a civilization.
The judicious decision to engage AI is a challenge. It’s a challenge for the government to regulate. It’s a challenge for companies to survive. It’s a challenge for users to isolate themselves from AI-driven addictions.
The AI Impact Summit, held from 16th to 20th February 2026 at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, served as a pivotal platform for shaping AI policy, industry collaborations, and addressing future challenges.
The government-to-government session of this program aimed to collaborate and regulate disruptive technology to make the world a better place to live.
The engagement among companies and the contracts might have resulted in impactful deals being signed. The venue had a separate, reserved space for corporate meetings and discussions.
Visitors to the display pavilion had the opportunity to experience the real-world use and impact of AI products. Students from academic institutions were allowed to showcase their AI projects. There was no discrimination based on the university’s rankings, legacy, or credibility. It was a true demonstration of democratic beliefs. Whosoever academics wished to participate were provided with space to demonstrate their skills with a no-questions-asked mindset.
This summit resembled a fair. Anyone can come, anyone can display, anyone can offer, anyone can engage, and it all builds confidence in the democratisation of AI.
The contemporary mindset of monetizing knowledge at every stage of its development, sharing, and use might align with the red ocean strategy of survival of the fittest. The Bhartiya philosophy consistently creates a blue-ocean strategy in which competition complements cooperation.
The AI summit at New Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam can be labelled as a one-stop shop for governments, companies, and users. Such events, without discrimination, are an honest attempt by the Bharatiya leadership to reposition the thoughts and ideas of Pandit Deendayal Upadhayay: that the East neither owns knowledge nor is it owned by the West, but is owned by the world. Whosoever needs ours can have it, and that’s our offer and belief. Unfortunately, the other way assumptions are weak. So, we need to lead by offering to others.
AI offers dark factories to aging countries and promotes decentralization as a positive alternative to traditional economies of scale, inspiring confidence in local and customized growth.
Academics, industry, corporations, and creative professionals, such as authors, singers, dancers, and others, occasionally raise doubts in the audience’s minds about whether the presentation is an original human composition or a machine-generated one.
Academic publications are already requiring authors to disclose the extent of AI’s contribution to the paper. There are academic regulations, such as plagiarism, that hedge the work of the original human. But if a human does not acknowledge the work of AI, it forces the conceptualization of ideas, such as the birth of organizations like “The Artificial Intelligence Association” and regulators spread across multiple universities, countries, and laws, and the regulatory matrix can be complex. The dark factories themselves will force the accounting firms and the government’s income tax department to rewrite the blueprint for sustainable fiscal behaviour. Human intelligence generated revenue for government and now its artificial intelligence that interests the income tax department.
The challenge of regulating AI’s role in intellectual property and work claims is a pressing global issue, requiring coordinated efforts to ensure fair and sustainable use across nations.
The illustration of the resume writing industry is good to recall to understand the role of AI in today’s work output. The employer faced a tough time figuring out the truth from the fudge in a job seeker’s resume. The hired resume writers created a portfolio for job seekers, and the higher the payment, the more favourable the resume could be. The Resume writing sector had its own “National Resume Writers’ Association” in America.
So, we are witnessing an AI story after experiencing a civilization that has already practiced the resume-writing industry, digital cheerleaders, amplified narratives, and the diminishing shelf life of technological ideas.
Ultimately, AI is a pattern reader; it’s a statistical model, it’s not a mathematical model. Statistics provides multiple recommendations with probabilities attached, while a mathematical model usually provides a single, discrete recommendation. And so, its recommendations will always have a tail risk.
The greatest benefit AI offers is its power to democratize education and business, breaking down financial barriers and fostering inclusive growth across society.
The sustainable way is the decentralised way; the sustainable way is the customised way. AI is manoeuvring civilisation in that direction, and we welcome AI. It will be delightful to hear the prediction of the next buzz that’s beyond AI.
(Alok Singh has a doctorate in management from the Indian Institute of Management Indore and is a promoter of Transition Research Consultancy for Policy and Management.)
