Reliance chief Ambani urges India to lead empathetic AI revolution

Ambani’s remarks are significant because they frame AI not just as a technology stack India must adopt, but as a domain where the country should aspire to genuine leadership. Coming from the chair of Reliance—with its reach across telecom (Jio), cloud, retail and energy—this sounds less like abstract boosterism and more like a directional signal for capital deployment and talent hiring. ([economictimes.indiatimes.com](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/artificial-intelligence/india-must-become-world-leader-in-ai-can-present-new-model-of-development-that-combines-intelligence-with-empathy-mukesh-ambani/articleshow/126097377.cms?from=mdr))

His emphasis on “intelligence with empathy” is also telling. It taps into a broader geopolitical narrative: if U.S. and Chinese firms are perceived as racing for raw capability, India can try to differentiate on socially grounded, cost‑efficient, and inclusive AI systems. That framing could encourage more investment in healthcare, education, agriculture and energy applications, which generate rich, localized data and harden models against messy, real‑world constraints.

For the AGI race, a serious push from a conglomerate of Reliance’s scale accelerates the build‑out of Indian AI infrastructure and applied research. It increases the odds that at least some frontier‑level research agendas, datasets and safety norms are shaped outside Silicon Valley and Shenzhen. A more multipolar AI ecosystem may not dramatically change the technical path to AGI, but it does change who gets to set the objectives and norms along the way.