AI’s rapid adoption presents major opportunities for India, but it also creates significant resource-use, infrastructure and social challenges. This conference proceeding synthesises insights from a workshop convened by IIT Tirupati and WRI India. In it, three expert panels examined the electricity demand and grid implications of AI data centres; the effects of AI on jobs, inequality and marginalised communities; and the pressures that AI infrastructure places on land, water and critical minerals. 

They also delved into the extent of renewable energy integration required to negate AI’s emissions, the efficiency standards and resource-use reporting necessary to minimise its resource consumption, and the responsible AI governance, workforce reskilling and circular-economy approaches necessary to enable a just transition. It concluded that India’s AI transition requires considerably more coordinated policy, reliable data, inclusive design and long-term planning that what it has presently to align it with its decarbonisation, resource security and just transition goals.