The growth of India LLMs

In this episode of EY.ai Unplugged, Rohit Pandharkar, Partner, Technology Consulting, EY India, explores the rapid evolution of Large Language Models (LLMs) globally and in India. Discover how AI is advancing beyond text generation into autonomous decision-making, transforming industries with agentic AI. Learn about India's growing AI ecosystem, the debate between open-source and closed-source models, and how Small Language Models (SLMs) are driving AI innovation on edge devices.

Key takeaways

Beyond text generation – LLMs are evolving into agentic AI, capable of making decisions, automating tasks and acting autonomously.
The rise of Indic AI – Homegrown AI models are breaking language barriers, making AI more accessible and inclusive.
Open vs. closed AI – While closed models prioritize control and accuracy, open-source LLMs offer flexibility for businesses to develop custom applications.
Advancing AI infrastructure – The development of large-scale AI infrastructure is accelerating innovation and expanding AI capabilities.

For your convenience, a full text transcript of this podcast is available on the link below:

Rohit: Hi and welcome EY.ai unplugged series – where Partners from our firm will be talking all about AI. I am Rohit Pandharkar the Consulting Partner for EY India, and I want to discuss today the growth of LLMs globally and in India.

Rohit: Imagine a world where AI does not just give quick answers but actually thinks through the problems step by step like we do. This is called chain of thought reasoning and it is already happening with today's advanced Large Language Models.

Rohit: These LLMs are far more capable than most people you can think and are imagining. Beyond just generating text and images, we are seeing the rise of agentic AI. These are elements that can take action, make decisions on your behalf, and use tools on their own like booking flights, managing calendars, or even conducting research.

Rohit: This shift is transforming customer service and business automation, marking a new era where AI is not just responding, but acting autonomously on your behalf and on your business' behalf.

Rohit: AI today, is not just speaking English anymore. Our homegrown models like Sarvam-1, Hanooman, and AI4Bharat are breaking new ground, understanding and generating text in over 10 Indic languages—from Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, and Bengali to Tamil and more.

Rohit: And this is just the beginning. Indian enterprises and startups are developing these native language models with a powerful vision: democratize and materialize knowledge, learning and expertise building.

Rohit: Democratize knowledge by allowing people to use technology in their mother tongue. Democratize learning by lowering the cost to use technology and access to lessons and dematerialize knowledge institutions and need to go to physical institutions by allowing people to build expertise at their home.

Rohit: There is also a debate between open source to source. Closed source models like GPT-4 are more controlled and prioritize accuracy and safety. But in contrast, open-source models like Meta’s LlaMA 3.2 allow businesses to build custom applications where you can literally download the whole model on your machines.

Rohit: Fine tune them from the engineering. The graphical processing units are the backbone of LLM advancements. They are the chips that are handling massive computations required by the transformer architectures behind generative AI.

Rohit: Nvidia's dominance in these chips is a crucial driver of the growth. And in India, companies like Yorker, Nissar and Tavares and Reliance are partnering with Nvidia to build cutting edge AI infrastructure and building large scale GPU cloud data centers.

Rohit: Finally, the rise of small language models aka, SLMs by Microsoft’s Phi-3.5, Llama 3.2, etc., allow GenAI to be run on edge devices. These models can be fine-tuned for specific tasks like research and customer support, or legal knowledge boards, offering quick responses with expertise on the edge devices like mobile points.

Rohit: To conclude, I would say the symbol of economic growth of yester years used to be the coal factories inside a country. I think in today's world of Generative AI powered by LLMs, India can become the token factor of the world and lead the global knowledge economy and the global knowledge revolution that AI is about to unleash.

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Podcast

Episode 15

Duration

4m 33s

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The growth of India LLMs

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