Tal av vice statsminister Ebba Busch vid AI Impact Summit i New Delhi
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Anförande av vice statsminister Ebba Busch vid India AI Impact Summit i New Delhi den 19 februari 2026. Talet hölls på engelska, det talade ordet gäller.
Thank you so much, Your Excellency, Ashwini Vaishnav.
Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, friends of AI. First of all, let me extend a heartfelt thank you to beautiful, beautiful India for hosting us all and being the first from the Global South to hold the AI Summit.
Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, often speak of India as Vishwamitra, a friend of the world. And today, we stand at a new frontier where that friendship is more vital than ever. The frontier of artificial intelligence. In the ancient scriptures we read of Samudra Manthana, the churning of the cosmic ocean. It teaches us that collaboration is the only way to unlock the deepest treasures. Today, the vast ocean of data is our Samudra and AI is our churning rod. To define our path, let us redefine a little bit what AI stands for in the India-Sweden partnership. For us, AI also stands for Aspiring India in so many ways.
The speed of AI implementation is not gradual. It truly actually is a shock, a shock to society and to our energy systems. In comparison, you can look at how long it took mobile phones to reach 100 million users. It took it 16 years, compared to the internet that took seven years. And then fast-forward to ChatGPT. That took two months to reach 100 million users. The fourth-largest US tech companies, invested around $200 billion in capital expenditure last year. And there were some discussions of how costly it was to put a man on the moon, but in comparison, adjusted for inflation, the cost of the entire Apollo program during a decade every single year, that is the equivalent of the investments we are seeing from some of the four largest companies.
AI will redefine the foundations of productivity, public services, defense, healthcare, and energy system. The question is not whether this transformation will happen. The big question is who shapes it and on what values and rules. This is the reason why Sweden, together with Zambia, took leadership in the UN project for the global framework for digitalization, the Global Digital Compact.
So, what can Sweden bring to the table? I would say it is four things.
Number one, energy. We have a magnificent energy system, almost 100% fossil-free electricity. We have an abundance of it, a very large surplus. And we are now investing heavily in nuclear power, which means we will add a lot of base load in the years to come. We have moved politics out of energy policy and put the laws of physics back into it.
The second one is skills and talent, and a unique way of combining both private sector, public partnerships, and of course academia.
The third is a different type of European leadership, prepared to be inspired by that of India with the type of innovative improvement that we are seeing for regulatory framework, moving away from the micromanagement that we have seen in some of the European framework and lawmaking this far.
And fourth, but not least, trust. If you make a deal with a Swede, that is a handshake you can trust. You know what you are going to get. And speaking of trust, democracies need to cooperate. India provides the incredible scale and speed, the very engine of this movement. Europe and Sweden can provide precision and trust in many ways, the filter that ensures that what we extract is the amrit, the nectar of progress for all of us.
And just as Lord Vishvakarma unified divine vision with practical tools, we must unify the human heart with machine power. We must not see AI as a replacement of the human spirit, but as a power multiplier for human dignity. When we combine India's digital scale with Sweden's systematic trust, we do more than just build code.
We build a future where technology never outruns our values.
So, let me conclude by saying the future of AI should empower our people and our planet's shared prosperity. Thank you so much for listening and welcome to Sweden.
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