India, Feb. 17 -- As global leaders gather at the AI summit in Delhi, the familiar script plays out yet again: The US versus China, trillion-dollar valuations, compute races, and speculation about machines that may one day rival human intelligence. India appears in this narrative, but usually in a supporting role. It is described as a large market, a vast engineering workforce, and a services hub, rarely as a country that will shape the architecture of Artificial Intelligence (AI) itself. That framing reflects a hierarchy and level of arrogance that places Silicon Valley and Beijing at the centre of technological destiny and treats everyone else as peripheral.

Over the past three years, Silicon Valley has delivered a steady stream of gra...