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    Op-Ed                                                              FEBRUARY 06, 2026       |  The Indian Eye 14

                       Davos 2026 and the Intelligent Age:

              How Artificial Intelligence Is Rewriting the

                Global Order—and India’s Role Within It

                  Davos 2026 makes one reality unmistakably clear: artificial intelligence must now prove its

             economic value. Across industries, the conversation has moved decisively toward productivity gains,
                                                cost efficiencies, resilience, and competitiveness

                                                                                                                  success is no longer measured by
                                                                                                                  novelty, but by measurable outcomes
                                                                                                                  and sustained value creation.
                                                                                                                      Infrastructure as Destiny
                                                                                                                      Perhaps the most sobering dis-
                                                                                                                  cussions at Davos centered not on al-
                                                                                                                  gorithms, but on infrastructure. AI’s
                                                                                                                  rapid expansion has exposed hard
                                                                                                                  physical constraints: energy avail-
                                                                                                                  ability, data-center capacity, semi-
                                                                                                                  conductor supply chains, cooling sys-
                                                                                                                  tems, and grid resilience.
                                                                                                                      NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang
                      H. S. PANASER                                                                               captured this reality by describing AI
                                                                                                                  as a multi-layered stack—beginning
                  he World Economic Forum                                                                         with energy and chips, rising through
                 Annual  Meeting  2026  in  Da-                                                                   cloud infrastructure and models, and
            Tvos will be remembered as the                                                                        culminating in applications. His mes-
            moment  when  artificial  intelligence                                                                sage resonated widely: without sov-
            decisively crossed from promise into                                                                  ereign control over these layers, na-
            power. What was once framed as dis-                                                                   tions risk long-term dependency and
            ruptive technology has now become              Nvidia chief meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi (ANI)   strategic vulnerability.
            a system-shaping force—one that                                                                           In this framing, AI is no longer
            touches  economics,  geopolitics,  ed-  ly within real-world environments.  change, he warned, risks outpacing   just a technological race; it is an in-
            ucation, healthcare, manufacturing,                                                                   dustrial  and  geopolitical  one.  Deci-
            and the very nature of human agency.  These systems are no longer con-  humanity’s ability to adapt its institu-  sions about power generation, data
                                                                                tions and moral frameworks.
                                              fined  to  generating  text  or  images;
                At  Davos  this  year,  artificial  in-                                                           localization,  and  semiconductor
            telligence was not a separate track or   they are increasingly entrusted with   The Economics of Intelligence  manufacturing now directly shape a
                                              decision-making,  workflow  orches-
            thematic sidebar. It was embedded   tration, supply-chain optimization,   Davos  2026  makes  one  reality   country’s place in the global order.
            in nearly every discussion, from glob-  research  acceleration,  and  financial   unmistakably  clear:  artificial  intelli-  The Human Intelligence Shift
            al growth and sustainability to secu-  execution.                   gence must now prove its economic     Beyond  economics  and  infra-
            rity and governance. The language     Executives from NVIDIA, Mic-  value. Across industries, the conver-  structure, Davos 2026 is defined by
            itself has changed. Leaders no longer   rosoft, Anthropic, and Google Deep-  sation has moved decisively toward   a deeper, more existential concern:
            speak primarily about experimenta-
            tion or possibility; instead, they de-  Mind spoke openly about a future in   productivity  gains,  cost  efficiencies,  the  future  of  human  intelligence  it-
                                                                                            and
                                                                                                  competitiveness.
                                                                                resilience,
                                                                                                                  self. As AI agents increasingly me-
                                              which AI agents act on behalf of indi-
            bate scale, infrastructure, return on
            investment, regulation, and societal   viduals, enterprises, and institutions.   Nearly sixty percent of global enter-  diate decisions, relationships, and
                                              This  evolution  from  automation  to
                                                                                prises are expected to scale AI de-
                                                                                                                  access to resources, the boundary be-
            impact. The age of curiosity has giv-  autonomy represents a profound   ployments in 2025 and 2026, moving   tween human judgment and machine
            en way to the age of consequence.  shift: intelligence is no longer merely   beyond pilot projects into core oper-  action continues to blur.
              From Hype to Deployment: AI     assisting human intent, but increas-  ational systems.                  Advances in robotics, multimod-
                     Comes of Age             ingly interpreting and executing it.  This shift has reframed AI not   al reasoning, and embodied systems
                One of the clearest signals from   At the same time, voices such   as a software upgrade, but as a form   are collapsing the distance between
            Davos  2026  is  that  the  global  con-  as historian and philosopher Yuval   of economic infrastructure. Leaders   thought  and  execution.  Machines
            versation around AI has matured.  Noah Harari cautioned that the ac-  increasingly compare it to electri-  can now sense, decide, and act across
            The focus has shifted from early   celeration of intelligence must be ac-  fication or the rise of the internet—  both digital and physical domains.
            generative AI demonstrations to en-  companied by equally serious reflec-  transformations  that  required  mas-  This transformation raises urgent
            terprise-grade and agentic systems   tion on governance, ethics, and social   sive investment, long-term planning,  questions that echo across industries
            capable of operating autonomous-  cohesion. The speed of technological   and public-private coordination. AI’s   Continued on next page... >>

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