Nvidia CEO said that 6 years ago, when no one was talking about artificial intelligence (AI), prime minister Narendra Modi asked him to address his cabinet on artificial intelligence.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said a few days ago: “About 6 years ago, when I first met Modi Ji, he asked me to meet with his cabinet and talk to them about artificial intelligence.” He made the comments during his recent meeting with Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani in Mumbai.

“I was very surprised,” he added. “This is literally the first time a government leader has asked me to address his cabinet on this particular issue (AI).”

Nvidia’s CEO said he was surprised to be asked to give the prime minister’s cabinet address because “it’s been so long since anyone’s talked about artificial intelligence.”

Huang also revealed that Prime Minister Modi told him something “pretty profound” during his recent visit to India. Modi told him that it was entirely logical that India should produce its own AI rather than outsourcing data to import intelligence.

The Nvidia CEO echoed the same sentiment in a recent conversation with India Today. In a question, he was asked how India can avoid being relegated to a back-office role in the new world powered by artificial intelligence. He said India should stop providing labor for software development done elsewhere. “Why don’t we export labor when software is produced elsewhere? Why don’t we produce intelligence here and then export it,” Huang said.

Nvidia CEO suggests that India should prioritize developing and exporting its own AI innovations, aiming to establish itself as a leader in AI development rather than merely serving as a support hub as it did during the IT boom.

“You have the data, the energy, the infrastructure. You have the critical components in the country to be able to collect raw data and turn it into intelligence,” he said. “There are many Indians all over the world who will enjoy Hindi on their phones. These tokens need to be produced here (India). This intelligence needs to be produced here”.

During his visit to India, Nvidia’s CEO also introduced a new Indian AI model called Nemotron-4-Mini-Hindi-4B, designed to enable Indian companies to create their own AI models.