{"id":221260,"date":"2025-01-22T11:04:11","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T11:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/22\/ai-start-up-founder-says-nandan-nilekani-is-awesome-but-also-wrong-heres-why-he-said-so\/"},"modified":"2025-01-22T11:04:12","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T11:04:12","slug":"ai-start-up-founder-says-nandan-nilekani-is-awesome-but-also-wrong-heres-why-he-said-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/22\/ai-start-up-founder-says-nandan-nilekani-is-awesome-but-also-wrong-heres-why-he-said-so\/","title":{"rendered":"AI start-up founder says Nandan Nilekani is ‘awesome’ but also ‘wrong’; here’s why he said so"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"AI<\/div>\n
Aravind Srinivas<\/a>, the Chief Executive Officer of California-based Perplexity AI<\/a>, voiced his disagreement with Infosys<\/a>\u2019 non-executive chairman Nandan Nilekani<\/a>‘s stance on artificial intelligence (AI). Srinivas called Nilekani ‘awesome’ but also criticized the tech veteran’s suggestion that Indian startups<\/a> should avoid building large language models<\/a> (LLMs) and instead focus on creating practical AI applications.<\/p>\n

While he acknowledged Nilekani’s significant contributions to India\u2019s technological and economic progress through initiatives like Infosys and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Srinivas raised concerns about the strategy of sidelining foundational AI model training.<\/p>\n

\u201cNandan Nilekhani is awesome, and he\u2019s done far more for India than any of us can imagine through Infosys, UPI, etc. But he\u2019s wrong on pushing Indians to ignore model training skills and just focus on building on top of existing models. Essential to do both,\u201d Srinivas stated in a post on social media platform X.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u2014 AravSrinivas (@AravSrinivas) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Srinivas stressed on the the importance of fostering both model training expertise and application development to enable India to fully benefit from AI advancements. <\/p>\n

Thinking models are going to cost a sh*t ton of money to train<\/h2>\n

Srinivas argued that India is making a strategic error by assuming that building AI foundation models is prohibitively expensive. \u201cRe India training its foundation models debate: I feel like India fell into the same trap I did while running Perplexity. Thinking models are going to cost a shit ton of money to train,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He wrote about India\u2019s potential to excel in AI, drawing parallels to the nation\u2019s achievements in the space sector. Citing Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) ability to achieve significant milestones with limited budgets, he noted that India could apply similar principles to AI development.<\/p>\n

\u201cElon Musk appreciated ISRO (not even Blue Origin) because he respects when people can get stuff done by not spending a lot. That\u2019s how he operates,\u201d Srinivas pointed out.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u2014 AravSrinivas (@AravSrinivas) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Srinivas urged India to shift its focus from merely leveraging open-source AI models<\/a> to developing its own foundation models that can compete globally. \u201cSo, I hope India changes its stance from wanting to reuse models from open-source and instead trying to build muscle to train their models that are not just good for Indic languages but are globally competitive on all benchmarks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He also highlighted the progress of the Chinese AI firm DeepSeek as an example of what could be achieved with a determined approach to AI development. While he expressed his inability to lead such an initiative himself, Srinivas offered support to anyone committed to the cause, adding, \u201cI\u2019m happy to help anyone obsessed enough to do it and open-source the models.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n