Recently Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT visited India. At an event he was asked about the possibility of an Indian startup creating its own foundational Artificial Intelligence platform, with say a small capital backing them in the range of $10mn.
Sam replied “We will explicitly tell you that it’s completely hopeless to challenge us in training foundational models, and you shouldn’t even attempt it. However, it is your responsibility to still make the attempt, and I genuinely hold both of these perspectives. I genuinely believe that the chances of success are quite slim.”
His comments caused some furor, with articles such ‘Sam Altman says its completely hopeless for Indian companies to compete in AI’ becoming viral.
We Indians do claim to have a lot of pride in ourselves, but it doesn’t take a lot for us to feel butt hurt either. Various tech company CEOs and senior employees flooded Twitter and LinkedIn with posts about how they ‘accept this challenge’ and will ‘show Sam it can be done.’
Sam, on his part, later clarified on Twitter that his comments were taken out of context, and he meant competing with $10mn being quite impossible. Back-pedaling or not, his comments did touch a raw nerve. Whatever we think about our multi-billion dollar software service industry and our nation’s entrepreneurs, one thing is seldom discussed, hard to accept but somewhat true – we cannot innovate.
This is not to say that Indian companies do not have many positive qualities. Indian companies can build strong brands and scale new heights in terms of sales and turnover. Their share prices can reach new highs. Indian founders and promoters can make it to the richest lists in the world. Indian employees too can work harder than anyone else in the world. However, to get even better, we need to address this elephant in the room. That Sam is kind of right – we can’t compete on innovation.
Most big Indian companies do offsites and retreats for their employees. There, CEOs will often make long speeches about innovation. However, if you ask the employees, they will tell you how innovation is actually discouraged in reality.
To fix this, we need to understand why this is the case. Here are five reasons why Indian companies are unable to innovate.
- India’s hierarchical culture – The beauty of Innovation is it can come from anywhere. Indian culture is designed around respect and reverence for seniors and elders. Years of experience is more important than new ideas. At home, we don’t question our parents. In companies, we don’t question the boss. Indian bosses usually have fragile egos, and feel terribly insecure if a junior has better ideas. Hence, those ideas are often killed. Juniors over time learn to not think or rock the boat too much. A culture of innovation requires a totally different mindset and setup, which Indian CEOs and promoters are unable to do.
- As a society, we discourage innovation – It is always about the greatness of our past, our heritage, the wisdom of the old texts, sages and what is passed down the generations. What this means is its better just because it is old. Innovation is about the new. If new is bad, how can we become an innovative society?
- Lack of scientific thinking – Indians don’t like to be too scientific, and innovation requires a ‘question-everything’ mindset, which we find too unsettling and dangerous. Invariably, we are skeptical of new science, even though we love to enjoy the spoils of it like smartphones and modern medicine. We keep pushing our kids to study science, but only because it helps them become employed in stable jobs as doctors and engineers. There is little interest in becoming a scientifically oriented society, as ‘our ancient culture had all the wisdom’ and ‘western science doesn’t have all the answers anyway.’
- Why innovate when you can ‘copy and paste’ – Most startup funding goes to companies that are clones of some successful western startup. It’s much easier to raise money for an Indian startups if they can point to a similar company abroad. We want our capital to go into copy-paste ventures. Our massive population means we can have many such successful ‘copy-paste’ companies. These entrepreneurs become the faces of new India. Wee are content celebrating this as India’s arrival on the world scene. It’s no less achievement to replicate an American tech company in India. Execution is hard, after all. However, this is not innovation, which means creating totally new, different, creative products or businesses.
- Lack of a free society – we are a free country, but do we allow all kinds of opinions, views and art, even if doesn’t agree with our own views? Invariably, innovative societies are free societies.
Is it necessary for a society, nation and its businesses to become innovative? If we aspire to be a global power one day, then yes. However, it will require a mindset shift, ego-shift, cultural-shift and capital-allocation shift for the Indian entrepreneurial eco-system to become known for their innovation. This is a long journey, but the first step is for Indian CEOs and promoters to not feel hurt or be defensive about Sam’s comments. Instead, actually change their companies so they foster and reward innovation. We as Indians too should encourage the future as much as we love the past, and embrace the new as much as we respect the old. Innovation is creation, and it is the essential part of progress.