‘Taken Out Of Context,’ Says Sam Altman, Clarifying His ‘Hopeless’ Assessment Of India’s AI Prospects

The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has responded to a video uploaded by CP Gurnani, the Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of Tech Mahindra, in which Altman can be heard saying that India’s chances of producing a ChatGPT-like tool are “hopeless.”

Gurnani quickly shared Altman’s response on Twitter, proclaiming his acceptance of the challenge. He expressed his resolve to disprove Altman’s claim. “According to OpenAI founder Sam Altman, it’s pretty hopeless for Indian companies to compete with them.” “Dear @sama, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED from one CEO to another,” he tweeted.

Altman stated that his remark had been misconstrued, highlighting that he was especially addressing the issue of competing with OpenAI with only a $10 million investment. He emphasised that competing with OpenAI in such conditions would be difficult.

Nonetheless, Altman encouraged Indian businesses to explore new pathways and contribute original ideas to the globe, emphasising that they have the ability to reach unprecedented success. He emphasised his belief in the capabilities of Indian entrepreneurs to embark on such ventures, emphasising that only the builders themselves could answer the question of what they could uniquely contribute.

The incident occurred at a The Economic Times event, where Altman was questioned by Rajan Anandan, a former Google Vice President in India and South East Asia and current venture financier. Anandan asked Altman if India was capable of developing an artificial intelligence technology like ChatGPT, triggering Altman’s response.

Altman noted that OpenAI’s stance on the topic involves emphasising the challenge of competing with them in training foundational models while encouraging others to try nevertheless. He reiterated his conviction that such a competition would be difficult, calling it “pretty hopeless.”

“The way this works is that we’ll tell you that competing with us on training foundation models is completely hopeless, and it’s your job to try anyway.” And I believe both of these statements. “I believe it is hopeless,” Altman remarked.

Meanwhile, Gurnani told Business Today about some of their AI-related work at Tech Mahindra. “At Tech Mahindra, we began working on Generative AI around 2015-16 with Storicool, one of our first IP created in the media domain.” It was a platform for automated content generation that was much beyond its years. Since then, we’ve created a range of AI products for businesses to help them accelerate their digital transformations. “We were also one of the first IT services companies whose chatbot, developed by Makers Lab, was named one of the 51 most credible chatbots (in the era of chatbots) in 2016,” he added.