India will set up a “high-powered committee” to study the development of large language models, or LLMs, tools that use artificial intelligence to build applications that can understand and process human language, the Union government’s chief scientific adviser Ajay Sood said. on Wednesday.

LLMs are a cornerstone technology that underlies several “smart” software programs and enables applications such as ChatGPT.

“A high-level committee will be constituted to study such an LLM and particularly how it can be applied to Indian languages,” said Dr. Sood speaking at TechSurge, a summit jointly organized by venture capital firm Celesta Capital and the US-India Business Council and Quad Investors Network.

“Fund of funds needed”

The Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser submitted a draft national deep tech startup policy for public comment on July 31. The purpose of the policy is to “ensure India’s position in the global deep tech value chain” in areas such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence and space technology.

India’s G-20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant, who was present at the summit, said India’s success in developing a range of technological applications, such as digital payments, has made it a “natural ecosystem” for deep tech. However. India needs a “fund of funds” – that is, a significant amount of private, foreign capital as well as government funds – to finance promising startups that are relatively long-term and called “patient capital”, he said.

US-India cooperation

US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti noted that India and the United States are at the best point in their relationship in many years, making it an ideal time for both countries to collaborate on deep tech. “For example, when we talk about a Facebook status, for a long time the relationship status was ‘it’s complicated,’ and now it’s moved to ‘in a relationship,'” he said. “There are no two nations on this globe that can do this work better together, balancing each other’s weaknesses with each other’s strengths and setting an example of what it means to do this with democratic values ​​that empower the people of the world “Be at the center of this technological revolution,” he added.

“The opportunities that exist in terms of collaboration and engagement between both countries are limitless,” said Arun Kumar, Managing Partner of Celesta Capital.

Scientific breakthroughs

“Deep Tech” is a buzzword in technology and startup circles that doesn’t yet have a precise definition. India’s draft policy document on deep tech cites Startup India’s database, which says that as of May 2023, there are 10,298 startups recognized by the Ministry of Industrial Promotion and Internal Trade, categorized into various sub-sectors within the larger deep tech space .

Broadly speaking, deep tech startups are those that have developed intellectual property that promises outsized impact but has not yet been realized and is based on new scientific breakthroughs. Crucially, companies and startups based on easily reproducible ideas are not considered deep tech startups.