New Delhi, Sept. 13 -- Every time Delhi hosts a gathering of world leaders, it must balance two competing demands: securing visiting dignitaries while keeping traffic moving. At the India AI Impact Summit in February, that balance was tested in ways that brought the cost of VVIP movement into sharp focus.

Former British PM Rishi Sunak arrived a few minutes late to a session and joked that AI could do many things, but it "can't yet fix Delhi's traffic". For Sara Hooker, co-founder and chief executive of Adaption Labs, it was more than an anecdote. Invited to a dinner hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she returned to her hotel to change, got stuck in traffic for four hours and missed the dinner.

But such disruptions raise a familiar...