The United States and China are battling for dominance in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) realm. A small Chinese startup, DeepSeek, has given American AI giant OpenAI a reality check.
India is now poised to launch a ChatGPT-like model. IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav discussed India’s ambitious AI mission during a press conference. He stated that India is working on its own Large Language Model (LLM) and it will be ready in 10 months.
Ashwini Vaishnav said, ‘We have prepared the framework and it is being launched today. Our focus will be on developing AI models that align with the Indian context and culture.’
IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav mentioned that DeepSeek AI was trained with 2,000 GPUs, ChatGPT with 25,000 GPUs, and we have 15,000 high-end GPUs. He highlighted that India has a robust compute facility to support our AI ambitions.
The government has prepared a compute facility with 18,000 GPUs, which will soon be accessible to startups, researchers, and developers.
Why are GPUs so important?
High-end GPUs are essential for training any language model. A GPU, or Graphical Processing Unit, is used for training large language models.
These are essentially graphics cards designed specifically for AI. Although normal GPUs can do the job, they are not as fast or efficient.
Zerodha Founder Nithin Kamath recently did a podcast with PM Modi. Following the DeepSeek storm, Kamath posted on X that India lags significantly in the AI space.
He noted that merely buying GPUs doesn't assure groundbreaking AI applications for India. Without engaging the right talent and fostering an innovation-driven ecosystem, all GPUs in the world are pointless. He also mentioned that our talents often migrate to America and elsewhere. Better research and innovation facilities can prevent this, boosting research and innovations in India.
LLM and GPU
GPUs can perform complex matrix operations simultaneously. They are designed for parallel processing, capable of executing thousands of tasks at once. LLM calculations are inherently performed in parallel. Training large language models requires substantial computational power, making GPUs crucial for AI model development. This need has propelled NVIDIA into becoming a massive company.
India AI Mission
The India AI mission aims to extend AI applications beyond technology to sectors like healthcare, education, agriculture, and weather forecasting.
It's noteworthy that in March last year, the IndiaAI mission received cabinet approval. With an AI mission budget of approximately 10,000 crores, it includes strengthening the AI computing ecosystem and promoting AI startups in India.
