OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s Surprising Comments on India Developing ChatGPT-like Model

During his multi-nation tour discussing artificial intelligence and its benefits, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently visited India where he met with Prime Minister Modi and engaged with entrepreneurs, media, and academics. While answering questions about AI, Altman made a striking comment that India’s ability to develop a ChatGPT-like foundational model for generative AI was “hopeless,” which was both unexpected and alarming.

Altman was responding to a question from venture capitalist and former head of Google India, Rajan Anandan, who asked, “Sam, we have a very vibrant ecosystem in India. We’re specifically focused on artificial intelligence, if an Indian startup wants to build foundational (AI) models, how should we think about it, here’s it , that the Indian team is building something truly remarkable.

Sam Altman says India’s chances of building AI education models are ‘hopeless’

Altman responded to that by saying, “The way this works is that we’re telling you that it’s completely hopeless to challenge us in basic model training, and it’s not even worth trying. And it’s your job to try it anyway. And I believe both of those things. I think it’s pretty hopeless anyway .”

Regardless of the response, Anandan has taken up the challenge quite sportingly. He took to Twitter to reply to Altman’s reply and tweeted, “Thank you @sama for the clear answer. Like you said ‘it’s hopeless but you still try’. 5000 years of Indian entrepreneurship has shown us that we should never underestimate an Indian entrepreneur. We will try.”

Tech Mahindra CEO CP Gurnani has also reacted to this exchange, tweeting, “OpenAI founder Sam Altman said it’s pretty hopeless for Indian companies to try to compete with them. Dear @sama, From CEO to another. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED”.

Peeyush Ranjan, VP, Google Assistant, also responded to Anandan’s tweet and said, “Great perspective @RajanAnandan – can’t bet against Indian entrepreneurship. I was surprised that the director of a non-profit organization discouraged entrepreneurs from joining the cause, instead seeing it as a competition.”

These posts, including the conversation between Anandan and Altman, have gone viral on social media.