Opinion Galgotias University ‘robodog’ scandal will be forgotten, but the weakness it exposed should not be

It reveals, in a single frame, the deeper fragility of India’s AI ecosystem today: The widening gap between narrative and capability, between performance and production, between staging ambition and building power. India’s desire to convene the world on AI governance, inclusion, responsible deployment and the voice of the Global South is legitimate. Hosting such summits signals aspiration and geopolitical intent.

We would also well remember that India’s G20 year was a triumph of choreography, but it also exposed how quickly optics replace outcomes. Many host cities saw vinyl cover-ups rather than lasting civic improvement, a reminder that spectacle is not transformation. It is a lesson the officialdom and private sector now echoes in its AI showmanship, projecting ambition without first building substance at scale.

AI is not a domain where rhetoric can substitute for foundations. Frontier innovation remains concentrated in a handful of Western and Chinese corporate laboratories, not because they host better conferences, but because they have accumulated the essentials: Compute at scale, research ecosystems of global quality, semiconductor resilience, proprietary architectures, patient capital and an uncompromising culture of credibility. No summit, however well-branded, can shortcut that accumulation.

In the coming days, it will be routine to see the incident managed into competing narratives, some dismissing it as a trivial misunderstanding, others amplifying it for political gain, and officialdom claiming it simply did not know.

A country serious about artificial intelligence cannot afford an ecosystem where perceived prowess is staged so casually, and verified so lightly. If universities become theatres for performative innovation rather than engines of rigorous research, India will produce graduates fluent in demos but not in breakthroughs. If corporate India treats AI as a branding layer rather than a national capability imperative, we will remain consumers of intelligence produced elsewhere, deploying models trained elsewhere, hosted on infrastructure owned elsewhere, governed by standards written elsewhere. And if policymakers confuse visibility with readiness, India risks becoming exactly what the global technology powers would prefer: a vast market and testing ground, not a frontier builder, a playground for Big Tech systems rather than a producer of foundational intelligence. That is the deeper deficit this episode briefly exposes, and it is one India cannot afford to normalise in the years ahead.

The incident also highlights the absence of institutional standards that serious ecosystems enforce instinctively. In AI, provenance matters. Claims matter. Research integrity matters. A country that seeks to shape global norms on responsible AI must first demonstrate credibility at home, not only in regulation but in the culture of its institutions. Centres of Excellence cannot be ornamental. They cannot exist primarily as marketing constructs. They must be measured by outputs that withstand scrutiny: Research publications, patents, indigenous architectures, safety work, and talent that competes with the best labs globally. Otherwise, the ecosystem becomes vulnerable to hype cycles, superficial exhibitions and the slow erosion of trust.

The question India must confront is blunt. Are we building AI sovereignty, or are we hosting AI theatre? First, India must invest in genuine research capacity, not merely downstream applications. Second, India must treat compute and infrastructure as strategic assets, because without domestic depth in chips, cloud resilience and high-end training capability, dependence is structurally baked in. Third, India must build regulatory clarity that balances innovation with accountability, rewarding authentic contribution while penalising deception, dilution and performative claims. And none of this will endure unless India also undertakes a hard reset of its STEM and skilling ecosystem, which remains dangerously misaligned with the demands of frontier technology. An education system built around rote credentials and outdated syllabi will not produce AI builders; it will only produce AI consumers.

AI is a disruptive force that will shape productivity, labour markets, warfare, state capacity and global power. We need to build institutions that privilege depth over display, capability over choreography, and credibility over applause. The “robodog incident” will be forgotten soon enough, but the weakness it exposed should not be.

What happened inside one exhibition stall is, in fact, a mirror of India’s wider AI moment. Our ecosystem is sliding into “FOMAI”, the fear of missing AI — the anxious rush to appear AI-ready before becoming AI-capable. In frontier technologies, credibility and supremacy have to be built and earned. The real test of AI prowess is whether we can build systems the world will pay to use.

The writer is a corporate advisor and author of Family and Dhanda