Name: India AI summit ends with a small show of defiance | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-02-20T15:41:11.000Z
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India's Artificial Intelligence Impact Summit wrapped up today with what was meant to be a show of unity.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the world's top AI bosses to raise their hands together on the stage.

There you can see them standing side by side.

OpenAI Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Emodi raised their fists but didn't hold hands.

It's just a small moment capturing the AI power struggle behind the summit's best big promises.

That moment came as India launched the New Delhi Frontier AI commitments.

That's a set of voluntary principles, not laws, meant to show that companies building the world's most powerful AI systems can act responsibly and work with governments on safety and oversight.

At the summit, he said the world urgently needs regulation to manage the risks of artificial intelligence.

For a democratic AI future, it is not enough to just give people tools and wealth.

We also need to give them agency and power.

Of course, this is not to suggest that we won't need any regulation or safeguards.

We obviously do urgently like we have for other powerful technologies.

Kathleen Muller is president and co founder of Ally, an independent organization that promotes responsible development, deployment and use of AI.

She has also advised a number of European institutions on AI and human rights.

Now, this summit saw voluntary commitments at the same time as calls for greater regulation are both needed because firms just cannot be trusted.

Well, I was kind of surprised to say to see this, this, this voluntary commitments.

They're not really commitments towards responsible AI.

They are about gathering statistical information, which is obviously interesting and very relevant, informed policymaking.

And they're about multilingual alums, which is also very good.

But that's not a commitment towards responsible AI.

And as to the request for regulation, to be honest, I find that quite rich because we have a very strong piece of regulation here in, in the EU we have the AI Act.

Altman, who asked for the regulation again, together with all his technology colleagues, big tech colleague, are now lobbying Europe to water down the regulation that we already have.

So if you on the one hand ask for regulation and the other try to burn it down, I cannot really take that seriously.

So what kind of regulation do you think Mr. Altman would like to see?

I would like to ask Mr. Altman to look at what kind of regulation is already out there.

We have the AI act, which is an example which can be used as a blueprint.

But there's also an AI treaty that was developed by the Council of Europe and that is open to all signatories.

And in fact, the United States was present in the room, was actually part of the negotiating group of that treaty.

So I mean, Mr. Altman can go to his government, say, look, this is the treaty.

It might not be perfect, we might not be there yet, but it is a start.

I want to talk about this image of Sam Altman and Daria Modi not holding hands, which has gone viral since this, since the summit.

From a governance perspective, does the rivalry between the leading companies make self regulation unrealistic at this point in time?

Well, we have examples of self regulation.

I'm not, I'm not really sure what's behind it.

We have the ethics guidelines for trustworthy, which is the best piece of self regulation I think that we have.

Also from Europe, we have a code of practice for general purpose AI that was signed by OpenAI, by Microsoft, by all the big tech companies and a couple of others.

And what surprises me a bit is that big tech companies are asking for regulations like they cannot help themselves.

Please regulate us, otherwise we'll burn down the house.

I mean, if you, if you don't know how to not burn down the house, you shouldn't be playing with the matches.

I think democratization of a I was a huge topic as well.

In your opinion, who should ultimately have agency over these systems?

The companies, from what I'm hearing you say, shouldn't be it, should it be governments or the public?

And how could that be designed and practice?

It's also a very difficult question because there's a lot of artificial intelligence tools that are very useful and that are not dangerous at all.

So this don't have to be in the hands of governments, but

if you look at the systems that have profound effects on society, profound effects on labor markets, profound effects on our safety, on our fundamental rights, you might want to think about having more oversight on those tools.

The first step that you need to take is regulation.

And regulation needs teeth because self regulation doesn't have teeth.

Voluntary codes of practice don't have teeth.

And this is why I really want to stress that now in Europe, there's a process of watering down the AI Act.

So the regulation that has not even entered into force fully yet, and that is a dangerous path.

We should try out this regulation, see where it goes, and

then start talking about, okay, maybe there are some tools that we need to bring into the hands of the public or of governments because they are too dangerous.

I want to look before we wrap up again at the role of companies here, because you raise a very interesting point there.

Does Sam Altman, does Dario Amadei, do all of these CEOs of these very powerful AI companies really know the power of the tools they are putting out there and how to rein them in if need be?

And if they don't, they should not build them, they should not roll them out over society without any proper testing, because that is what's happening right now.

It's a bit like we've discovered that cocaine makes you happy and the next day the doctor starts prescribing it for treating depression.

And what we see now is these companies, and

maybe to your earlier questions, rivalry between these two men and maybe between also the other men, this rivalry might make them maybe less open to look at those things and try to fight for, well, being the fastest, being the earliest, being the first mover.

And with this technology, that's a dangerous path.

That was Kathleen Moeller, president and co founder of alai.