OpenAI CEO meets Modi; PM says AI's potential for India's tech ecosystem vast

New Delhi, June 9

The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in enhancing India's tech ecosystem is indeed vast, particularly among the youth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday.

The Prime Minister reacted after meeting OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in the national capital.

"Thank you for the insightful conversation @sama. The potential of AI in enhancing India's tech ecosystem is indeed vast and that too among the youth in particular," PM Modi said in a tweet.

"We welcome all collaborations that can accelerate our digital transformation for empowering our citizens," he added.

Earlier in the day, Altman said that he met PM Modi and discussed India's incredible tech ecosystem with him.

Altman, who also addressed students and others at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIIT-Delhi), said that he had a great conversation with PM Modi.

"Great conversation with @narendramodi discussing India's incredible tech ecosystem and how the country can benefit from AI," Altman tweeted.

"Really enjoyed all my meetings with people in the @PMOIndia," he added.

Altman had said that the company behind ChatGPT is not presently training GPT5 -- the successor to GPT4.

"We have a lot of work to do before GPT5. It takes a lot of time. We are nowhere close to it," Altman said at a conference hosted by The Economic Times in Delhi.

"We're working on the new ideas that we think we need for it, but we are nowhere close to the start. There need to be more safety audits: I wish I could tell you about the timeline of the next GPT," he added.

Altman's comments come amid growing concern among AI researchers and Big Tech executives about the alarming pace at which the technology is developing.

In March, several top entrepreneurs and AI researchers, including Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, Co-founder of Apple, wrote an open letter, asking all AI labs to immediately pause training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months.

Over 1,100 global AI researchers and executives signed the open letter to pause "all giant AI experiments".

After a few weeks, Altman acknowledged that the letter lacked the most technical nuance, but asserted that OpenAI hadn't started training GPT-5 and wouldn't do so for "some time".

In May, Altman admitted that if generative AI technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong, as US Senators expressed their fears about AI chatbots like ChatGPT.

Altman, who testified at a hearing in the US Senate in Washington, D.C., said that the AI industry needs to be regulated by the government as AI becomes "increasingly powerful".