IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw On China's DeepSeek

India's IT Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, has highlighted the nation's growing capabilities in artificial intelligence (AI). He stressed India's access to advanced computing resources and the potential for hosting open-source AI models like DeepSeek. "It is an open-source model. Like LLaMA (LLM by Meta), which is open source, this too can be hosted on Indian servers. Data privacy issues regarding DeepSeek can be addressed by hosting open-source models on Indian servers," Vaishnaw said during his address at the Utkarsh Odisha Conclave.

DeepSeek's privacy policy states that data collected is stored on servers in China. The company mentions that personal information may be stored outside the user's country of residence. They ensure that any data transfer complies with applicable data protection laws.

India's AI Ambitions

Vaishnaw also revealed plans for India to develop its own generative AI model. This initiative will be supported by the India AI Compute Facility. The minister compared the computational power required for training various AI models, noting that "DeepSeek AI was trained on 2,000 GPUs, ChatGPT was trained on 25,000 GPUs, and we now have 15,000 high-end GPUs available. India now has a robust compute facility that will support our AI ambitions."

The India AI Compute Facility has acquired nearly 19,000 GPUs to create a large language model tailored for India. Among these, 15,000 are high-end GPUs. This acquisition surpasses the government's initial target of 10,000 GPUs.

Focus on Indian Context

"We have created the framework, and it is being launched today. Our focus is on building AI models that maintain the Indian context and culture," Vaishnaw stated. This approach allows India to leverage cutting-edge AI technology while ensuring data protection and compliance with local regulations.

The minister emphasized that with algorithmic efficiency, these models can be developed rapidly. "We will have a world-class foundational AI model in just a few months," he added.