Should India build its own OpenAI? What we need to win the AI race

From high-stakes questions about sovereign computing to the immediate personal threat of voice-cloning fraud, artificial intelligence is reshaping India’s economic and daily landscape. In an interview with The Federal, Prof Soumitra Dutta, a computer scientist, educator, and entrepreneur, breaks down what’s real versus what’s hyperbole in current AI headlines. Prof Dutta holds a PhD in AI from UC Berkeley and serves as an Executive Director at SRM Group. He was Dean of Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford from 2022 to 2025, and earlier founding Dean of the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University. India shouldn't worry about building massive frontier models, he says, explaining what lessons can be drawn from global tech centres like the UK, and the practical steps people must take every day…