New Delhi, Feb. 20 -- The high-stakes India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi has been extended into a six-day affair. By Saturday afternoon, however, exhibition booths will begin to come down, global leaders will slip into private meetings or board flights home-their tickets and hotel bookings fixed long ago-and the crowds will thin.

The expo started on Monday, 16 February, with ambition to position India as the AI voice of the Global South-championing inclusive policy built on open-source models and digital public infrastructure-and sought to marry geopolitical aspiration with technological leadership.

However, while large summits (over 20 heads of state, more than 250,000 visitors from 45 countries, and 600 startups spread across a 70,00...