AI Impact Summit Delhi 2026: How India plans to balance jobs, security and innovation

The AI Impact Summit Delhi 2026 at Bharat Mandapam positions India as a key voice in shaping the global future of artificial intelligence. This year, the summit on the transformative implications and threats of artificial intelligence is being hosted in a Global South nation for the first time, and leaders, companies, and researchers from more than 100 nations are expected to be present.

AI Impact Summit Delhi 2026: India’s Expanding Global AI Role

Speaking at the summit, Narendra Modi said AI is already transforming healthcare, education, agriculture and governance in India. The theme of welfare and mutual development at the summit highlights one of the main lessons: India is not just becoming an adopter of AI, but also writing its own story. Hosted at Bharat Mandapam in Delhi, the summit marks the first time this global AI forum is held in a Global South country.

AI and Jobs in India: Evolution over elimination

The debate on AI and Jobs in India focuses on how automation is reshaping work rather than removing it entirely. These debates at the summit contribute to an increasing consensus that AI will not eliminate work but just change it in a one-night event. The automation will decrease the demand on repetitive jobs in IT services and operations, but will increase the demand on higher-order skills like model supervision, system integration and data interpretation. This is a change of execution to oversight and optimisation to the large population of technology workers in India. The most important point to make is that employability will be less about stagnant degrees and more of ongoing reskilling, particularly in domains that integrate domain expertise with AI expertise. This is creating demand for AI cybersecurity jobs, especially in banking, healthcare and government services.

Cybersecurity becomes central to the AI economy

The rise of cybersecurity and AI together shows that protecting digital systems is now as important as building them. The significant lesson of summit discussions is the fact that the development of AI cannot be viewed outside the context of cybersecurity preparedness. With the introduction of AI systems into the sensitive fields of banking, healthcare, and government services, it can be manipulated, stolen data, and misinformation. Although threat detection can also be enhanced by AI itself, there are also advanced attacks, including phishing and deepfake fraud, which can be automated. Such a twofold nature of cybersecurity has rendered it one of the rapidly expanding areas of work related to AI implementation. The trend of India is obvious: securing the information, models, and digital public infrastructure will become as significant as the creation of new AI applications.

AI governance in India

Lawmakers stressed the need for AI governance in India that balances innovation with legal and ethical safeguards. The appearance of technology giants at the world scale like Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman and the presence of ministers and politicians underscores the fact that AI governance turns out to be a global issue, not a national one. The UK officials, who spoke before the summit, focused on collaborating with allies on responsible AI, whereas Indian lawmakers insisted on legal and ethical guardrails.

According to MP Raghav Chadha, the summit has become a historic occasion that can be used to model AI in terms of power, protection, and progress. What it means is that India is being innovative and with accountability, trying to have a balance between growth and citizen confidence. Addressing the summit, Raghav Chadha remarked that AI never ceased to be merely about technology but power and strategy among nations.

He described how countries that have good computers and digital infrastructure would be ahead in the future and cited that processing power and digital systems would determine who is a winner in the AI era. He further cautioned that AI is in the hands of a few players in three senses: it is designed by a small number of companies, it is made in a few regions, and it is exported through policies such as US policy. Although India is not taking over control of these regions, yet it has a massive lead in human talent, as the world is turning to India to get skilled AI employees. "Artificial intelligence is no longer just a technology issue but a strategic one."

However, he said that it is not only talent that is required and that talent without computers is aspiration so India needs to develop good computing, local infrastructure, and safer supply chains as well. He compared AI and chips to oil and steel of the old, that they will determine global might and force in the future, and emphasised that India needs to move swiftly to position herself in this new world order. "This is a defining moment for how we shape AI in the public interest. It will influence how we govern, build, and protect citizens in the years ahead" he stated. 

Where India heads from here:  Future of jobs in India

The future of jobs in India will depend on how quickly workers can adapt to AI-assisted roles through reskilling. The integration of the messages of the peak means an Indian future with AI and jobs developing alongside each other. Mass layoffs are not the threat at hand but imbalanced preparedness. In case the skilling initiatives trail the deployment, the disparity between those who can operate with AI and those who cannot may be even larger. Cybersecurity, in its turn, will serve as a protective measure and a job provider. The future of India will rely on its ability to integrate security in the systems of AI, develop training at a mass level, and ensure that people are not afraid by a set of clear rules. The central message of the AI Impact Summit is not that people should fight against automation, but that they must be ready to change. In that respect, smartness does not lie in India, but rather in creating a workforce and policy structure that is intelligent enough to match. A clear India AI policy will be critical to ensure public trust as AI becomes part of daily life.