We should keep AI ‘under our reins’ for the common good: Sitharaman

Sitharaman likened AI and technology to Asuras in the Puranas, who had to be “kept in hold” to do good for humanity. “But once that is left without much of a control, that’s when it comes to hit at people who have created it. We all know the stories of how various Asuras have not kept up the promise, which was a boon given with a little rider — you are given this boon so long as you don’t do certain things. But the moment he starts doing a certain thing which is under the ‘don’t do’ category, it gets out of control,” she said.

“I think AI is something which we, because it is in our DNA, should know how to keep it well under our reins and serve for the common good,” Sitharaman added.

Her comments came after Vaishnaw, who spoke at the report launch before her, said, “In our entire approach, our bias in technology is more towards innovation. When there is a trade-off between regulation and innovation, we tend to tilt more towards innovation.”

“That’s very different from, let’s say, Europe and many other parts of the world, where the tilt is more towards regulation, passing a law, creating a regulatory body. We believe that technology is something which will innovate and we will evolve into getting the right regulatory structure rather than prescribing it through a law,” according to Vaishnaw.

The NITI Frontier Tech Hub report said India could capture 10-15 per cent of global AI value by 2035 through faster adoption across industries and AI-led R&D. It recommended building sovereign infrastructure, skilling people to future-proof jobs, embedding AI in key sectors such as banking, pharmaceuticals, and automotive, and strengthening governance frameworks for responsible deployment.

At the launch, Sitharaman said, “We do not want regulations that literally wipe off the technology itself. We want regulations because we want a responsible application… But that has to be kept up because AI is not static. As we heard now on the datasets and so on, AI is a rapidly progressing, dynamic thing.”

“I see the challenge not just in jobs but also in the way in which (AI) can be used for not so much of a betterment of the society. So we need to be clear that regulation has to be running this race equally, as much as the technology is running it. If the technology is on a sprint, regulation should also be on a sprint. You cannot be thinking that we’ve done something about regulation and therefore that’s over and done with,” she added.

The report launch comes ahead of India’s hosting of the AI Impact Summit in February 2026, after earlier editions in Bletchley Park, Seoul and Paris.