New Delhi, Aug. 17 -- I've known Abhishek Singh, a senior bureaucrat, for some time now. He's been in the Indian tech ecosystem for a while, leading multiple government-backed digitisation initiatives. Now, as chief of the billion-dollar India AI Mission, he faces one of his biggest challenges in a public-service career spanning three decades.

The reasons for this are varied. For one, the fact that AI presents a huge opportunity to a long-serving government official shows just how far the technology has come, and how it now affects everyone. More importantly, though, India could potentially gain or lose a lot depending on what we do with AI.

Let me take you back a few decades. If you've read the venerable Chip War by Chris Miller (whom ...