Artificial Intelligence as a Utility in India by 2047

Abstract

Artificial intelligence may become an ordinary input into economic and civic life, accessed through services as routinely as electricity. This essay examines what that possibility means for India as it approaches the centenary of independence in 2047. Building on the argument of The Grid That Thinks, it uses the history of electrification and selected research on productivity, AI costs and infrastructure to assess the utility analogy. The central argument is that affordable computational capability produces broad social value only when institutions reorganise around it and access includes language, reliability, accountability and effective redress. The analogy illuminates complementary investment and unequal diffusion, but weakens when applied to the measurement of intelligence, market structure and systems that interpret information or act on users' behalf. The essay proposes a plural infrastructure approach combining shared public capabilities, competing providers, local evaluation and human fallback. It treats 2047 as a planning horizon rather than a forecast and identifies observable outcomes by which the promise of an intelligence utility could be judged.