The India International Science Festival (IISF) 2025, underway since December 6, has emerged as a major platform inspiring scientific temperament among youth and advancing India’s journey toward Viksit Bharat@2047. On the third day of the event, a high-level panel discussion titled AI & AGI: The Future of Intelligence brought together leading minds from research, academia, and industry to explore the transition from Artificial Intelligence to Artificial General Intelligence and its societal impact.
The session featured Professor Rajeev Ahuja, Director of IIT Ropar; Gopal Krishna Bhatt, Director – Data Centre Customer Engineering at Intel; Vivek Kumar Rai, Head – Strategic Business, HPC & AI at NVIDIA; and Pratyush Kumar, Co-founder of Sarvam AI.
Addressing school students, Ahuja said India is on track to become a global leader in AI by 2035, driven by young talent and a rich data ecosystem. He highlighted that the IndiaAI Mission, launched by the Prime Minister, aims to train one crore youth in AI while expanding national computing capabilities and developing responsible AI models. He added that IIT Ropar hosts one of the three national Sectoral AI Centres of Excellence, focusing on agricultural innovation under the Ministry of Education.
Speaking on deep-tech progress, Gopal Krishna Bhatt of Intel discussed India’s growing capabilities in server design, high-performance computing hardware and semiconductor development. Referring to the Intel–CDAC collaboration on the Rudra server platform, he noted that India is steadily shifting from chip import dependence to indigenous design and manufacturing. He encouraged young students to cultivate curiosity as the foundation of innovation.
Vivek Kumar Rai of NVIDIA outlined how AI is accelerating advances in drug discovery, climate modelling, material research, automotive engineering, and other scientific domains. He emphasised that GPU-driven computing is strengthening national missions such as supercomputing, weather forecasting and research collaborations. He added that AI is bridging linguistic diversity, supporting the government’s vision of inclusive technological growth.
Pratyush Kumar of Sarvam AI showcased multilingual systems being built under the IndiaAI Mission, including India’s first sovereign foundational Large Language Model for Indian languages. He explained how AI can empower policymaking, agriculture, climate action and economic modelling, stressing the importance of language diversity and equitable access to digital technology.
Across the session, speakers agreed that India’s demographic advantage, supported by strong policy momentum under the Prime Minister’s leadership, places the nation on an accelerated pathway toward global leadership in AI and future AGI systems. Students were encouraged to adopt AI tools, pursue deep-tech careers, and contribute to India’s vision of becoming an innovation-led knowledge powerhouse by 2047.
The discussion concluded with an interactive Q&A session.
