We often marvel at the recent spectacular AI breakthroughs and the prospect of AGI being realised sooner than later. Also, it is customary to view the unfolding AI scenario through the prisms of power, control, and market supremacy, primarily involving AI companies and labs in the US and China along with their respective governments. To be sure, the US remains at the helm of the frontier AI ecosystem—on computer, models, and strategic direction. It is the undisputed leader across the
We often marvel at the recent spectacular AI breakthroughs and the prospect of AGI being realised sooner than later. Also, it is customary to view the unfolding AI scenario through the prisms of power, control, and market supremacy, primarily involving AI companies and labs in the US and China along with their respective governments. To be sure, the US remains at the helm of the frontier AI ecosystem—on computer, models, and strategic direction. It is the undisputed leader across the globe in the global market for electronic chips which power the servers installed in the massive data centers for AI development. The US commercial interests too view US’s supremacy in AI chips industry as a bargaining tool to be leveraged by the US government in leading AI diplomacy across the world. China, a close second, has been intensifying its AI race as well. Going by the outputs of its AI ecosystem like DeepSeek's various LLMs, China seems to have successfully worked around AI chip export controls applied by the US in recent years. Its current capabilities in frontier AI development as well as future plans and prognosis are not far behind those of the US.
Frontier AI R&D efforts have grown and succeeded by leaps and bounds since 2023 with models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo (o3), o4 mini, Anthropic’s Claude 4, Google DeepMind’s Gemini 2.5, Meta’s LLaMA 4, and DeepSeek’s various models. The o3 and subsequent models represent a crucial pivot point—of LLMs having evolved from passive predictors to interactive, semi-autonomous agents. With memory, reasoning, planning, instruction-following, multilingual ability, multimodal understanding and increasingly human-like dialogue, they show significant leaps toward AGI, so that we may expect to have in our lives at least some systems endowed with AGI, capable of performing a wide range of cognitive tasks at human level by 2026-2027.
Yet, beyond marveling at AI and the question of who leads in AI race lies a question of far deeper import, namely, what would be the impact of this tsunami on the vast masses of humanity at different levels of mental evolution and existence the world over? For instance, visualise the over 580-million aspirational young population in the age range of 15 to 40 in India standing today at the cusp of an AI wave they did not create, do not yet fully understand, and for the most part, are ill-prepared to surf. While the urban and semi-urban youth are aware of the AI tsunami to a great extent, the response of the majority is limited to attempts to upskill by learning usage of some AI tools. AI is viewed through a narrow utilitarian lens: a new tool to be learnt, a job skill to be added, a LinkedIn trend to be followed. On the other hand, millions in India, especially at the lower rung of socio-economic development, do not comprehend or even perceive the AI juggernaut, but shall live through its consequences nevertheless! Many still harbour the belief that an educational degree per se is the passport to economic success and good life. However, with widespread advent of AI, this link is likely to weaken progressively in times to come. In the process, thousands of aspirations especially from the lower rungs of society tethered to outdated notions of education run the risk of suffering reversals. These are not just reckonings about Bharat (i.e., India). They are human reckonings. As AI systems grow in scope and sophistication, the lag between technological capacity and human readiness is widening into a chasm. And this “readiness lag” among the human beings is as diverse as the human population itself.
We are deploying AI into a human ecosystem of unequal psychic development. Not all humans are equally prepared to interface with super-intelligent systems. Some have the mental clarity, resilience, and education to navigate this complexity; others are barely coping with the present. We are, in effect, introducing a planetary-scale cognitive prosthesis into the human ecosystem without any roadmap for its mental, emotional, or spiritual integration.
This brings us to the question of anchoring the AI revolution. The AI companies—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, DeepSeek—and the governments backing them, must begin to grasp this more fully. With a civilisation-altering force that is AI comes a profound responsibility: for, what in the Vedantic thought we call, Vivek—the power of discrimination, the ability to discern what is truly for the greater good (Samashti) as opposed to individual good (Vyashti). Wisdom, in this sense, is the ability to ask and answer: what should we build, and equally importantly, what should we not build?
For us in Bharat, a response to AI shaped by market logic would not take us beyond shallow use. Good things at scale would come through AI only with deeper philosophical engagement and profoundly imaginative approach. We need scores of evangelists and Samaritans working for responsible AI, bridging the chasm between AI’s possibilities and society’s preparedness, between Vyashti and Samashti. They must operate in villages, towns, and cities, in policy rooms and classrooms, not to proselytise technology, but to humanise it. This would fulfill the deeper imperative: alongside the technical architecture of AI, the need for the human architecture of wisdom. Iti.
This article is authored by Sangeeta Trehan, advisor, A4G Global Collaborative, New Delhi.
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