Originally published on Global Policy on July 25, 2025. Aydin Guven examines India’s AI policy and its ambitious mission to become a “Global AI Garage,” exploring the gap between visionary rhetoric and the country’s practical readiness in AI governance. India’s bid to lead in artificial intelligence is torn between ambition and dependence. Despite bold visions like becoming a “Global AI Garage,” the country’s reactive policymaking and reliance on foreign hardware risk turnin

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often described as the next general-purpose technology, holding the promise of transforming economies much as electricity and the internet once did. That promise, however, depends not on technological breakthroughs alone, but on whether AI adoption spreads widely across firms, sectors, and regions. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)—which account for more than 90 percent of businesses worldwide and nearly half of global GDP—sit at the ce

Artificial intelligence is often discussed in extremes: either as a purely technical challenge to be solved by better models, or as a societal risk to be managed through regulation and ethics frameworks. In practice, however, AI lives in the space between these two worlds. Over the past several years, my work has focused on exactly that intersection, where machine learning meets policy, institutions, and governance, and on what we gain when we stop treating them as separate d

Originally published  on Project Syndicate on October 22, 2025. Disregarding ethical considerations in the name of AI innovation – the direction taken by the US – is a recipe for disaster. But pretending that lofty ethical principles will solve the real governance challenges AI raises is similarly misguided. WASHINGTON, DC – The biggest governance dilemma in AI is setting guidelines for the technology’s ethical use without unduly weakening the incentive to innovate. So far, c