Indian External Affairs Minister at the United Nations says states have the right to build their own models and protect their technological sovereignty

Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in its 81st session that every country has an inherent right to shape its own artificial intelligence system. He explained that this right includes building independent local models and adopting deployment strategies that suit its national priorities and development goals, emphasizing that artificial intelligence is a central pillar of the partnership agenda led by India with the Global South.

Technological sovereignty is no longer a political luxury but a necessity for addressing broad societal challenges.The Indian minister sees artificial intelligence as a transformative engine for empowering people, achieving economic prosperity and tackling challenges across a massive population, noting that his country hosted the AI Impact Summit in February to gather expertise and shape this approach. He called for making democratic access to technology a pathway that enhances mutual respect, considers everyone's interests and serves the pursuit of international peace and stability.

Jaishankar warned that the trajectory of technology could shift from a source of hope to a cause of international concern, noting that misuse of artificial intelligence entrenches biases and weakens mutual respect among cultures. These challenges arise as the Global South confronts a complex crisis affecting food, fuel, fertilizers and financing, alongside the fallout from an extreme El Niño event, disrupted grain flows and slipping Sustainable Development Goal targets. He pointed out that exclusionary practices and denial of market access undermine those countries' right to manufacture, affirming that rebalancing the world’s economic and political order requires a comparable advance in cultural rebalancing and recognition of national identities through modern technologies.

Shifting from consuming off-the-shelf solutions to owning infrastructure redraws the region’s calculations.This stance directly affects technical decision-makers and engineering teams in the Gulf, Egypt and the Arab East. The call to build local models instead of relying entirely on external providers aligns with regional institutions’ need to protect data sovereignty and avoid cultural and linguistic biases embedded in imported systems. For those leading digital transformation in a Gulf bank, a government agency or a startup, this shift means directing investment toward training talent to fine-tune models and developing local governance frameworks that ensure technical decision-making independence and lower the cost of dependence on closed external infrastructures.

Linking AI development to actual development needs puts an end to treating technology as an isolated consumer product. As the international movement to enable countries to build their own algorithms gains momentum, your ability to create systems that serve your local environment becomes the true benchmark for the success of any technology strategy in the Arab world.