New Delhi, Dec. 5 -- India will be central in how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is deployed in the real world, with the country set to provide a significant share of global usage cues over the next year, said Srinivas Narayanan, chief technology officer for B2B Applications at OpenAI, on Thursday. In an online session at the 23rd Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, Narayanan also spoke about evolving guardrails for AI usage, OpenAI's focus on India and Indian languages, enabling UPI payments and the challenges of scaling. His comments come at a time when the arc of AI evolution is believed to be at an inflection point -- both in terms of technology as well as regulations. "India is going to be central to how AI is deployed in the real world. And I think one of the amazing things about India is just the energy, and the excitement for AI is really high," said Narayanan. "I talk to people who are building incredibly rich sets of applications, not just for India, but for the whole world." OpenAI's India focus, the company believes, is key to their growth. The ChatGPT Go subscription tier, which is otherwise priced at Rs.399 per month, is available for free for a year. This, Narayanan said, defines the company's "goal to remove every barrier to adoption in India". P11...