India has ‘central role’ in managing AI risks and opportunities, says Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has talked about the important role of India in the development of AI systems. Amodei was speaking at a panel discussion on Day 4 of the AI Impact Summit at the Bharat Mandapam on Thursday.

In his address at the summit, Amodei said that India has historically set a standard for the Global South and has helped diffuse technology and humanitarian benefits across the Global South, as per a PTI report.

“For most things, we're increasingly close to what I've called a country of geniuses in a data centre, a set of AI agents that are more capable than most humans at most things, and can coordinate at superhuman speed. That level of capability is something the world has never seen before, and brings a very wide range of both opportunities and concerns for humanity,” Amodei said at the summit.

At the fireside chat later at the summit, Amodei said there is an “excitement” for AI adoption in India that is unmatched across other places in the world.

“I would say there’s just an excitement here across technical, academic, media and policy communities. The use of Claude for technical work, programming, software engineering, mathematical tasks, is substantially higher here in India than in most other places in the world. And every time I go speak at these builder or developer events in India, there’s just a different level of excitement,” Amodei said.

“In just the last four months, you know, the use of Claude and Claude Code has doubled in India. And I’m sure it’s the same for the others. I don’t say that to promote Claude or Claude Code; it’s more a statement about the kind of excitement in India at the enterprise level,” he added.

AI could accelerate economic growth in India:

Amodei said that AI could help accelerate the rate of economic development in India. He said, “There’s so much technical potential and technical adeptness in India. It almost seems like a perfect case study for the idea that AI could really accelerate economic growth, because the base ingredients are kind of all there, and AI could help tie them together.”

“In the developed world, people wonder whether AI will lead to growth. But here in India there’s still a lot of catch-up growth to be done. There’s an enormous amount of technical potential and ability, and a willingness to adopt AI that you don’t see in many places in the world,” he added.