PM Narendra Modi meets OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, says ‘we welcome all collaborations’

India welcomes all collaborations that can accelerate its digital transformation and help empower its citizens, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said after his Thursday meeting in New Delhi with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, who is currently on a tour meeting world leaders across Europe and Asia.

“Great conversation with @narendramodi discussing India’s incredible tech ecosystem and how the country can benefit from AI. Really enjoyed all my meetings with people in the @PMOIndia,” Altman tweeted on Friday.



Replying to him on Twitter, Modi wrote: “Thank you for the insightful conversation @sama. The potential of AI in enhancing India’s tech ecosystem is indeed vast and that too among the youth in particular. We welcome all collaborations that can accelerate our digital transformation for empowering our citizens.”


In addition to India, Altman is currently touring countries like Israel, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE, and South Korea.

Prior to this, he had been meeting heads of states and governments in Asia as well as Europe.

Early Adopters of ChatGPT

These include Israel President Isaac Herzog, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

At an event organised by The Economic Times in New Delhi on Wednesday, Altman spoke about Indian users being early adopters of OpenAI’s flagship product ChatGPT.

“India has been a country that has really, truly embraced ChatGPT. Maybe you can tell me why. I’m hoping to learn while I’m here. There has been a lot of early adoption and real enthusiasm from the users,” he said in an interaction with Times Internet vice chairman Satyan Gajwani.

“One of the earliest things, like in the first weeks of launching ChatGPT, we heard about a farmer in India who wasn’t able to access government services, and via ChatGPT hooked up to WhatsApp in some sort of complicated way and was then able to. That was one of the early things — we were like, we did not think that was going to happen,” he added.

Altman had also spoken on the need for regulation of bigger players. He added that smaller companies and startups should be allowed to operate unregulated as it is important to let them flourish.

Governments across the world, Altman said, must think about regulating bigger companies such as OpenAI and Google in a way that doesn’t slow innovation and impede the positive economic benefits that could flow from AI.

“We have explicitly said there should be no regulations on smaller companies or on the current open source models — it’s important to let that flourish,” he said at the ‘ET Conversations’ event on Wednesday. “The only regulation we have called for is (on) people like ourselves or bigger.”