Takaro Episode 77 - India AI Summit and MCW

India’s AI Impact Summit & Mumbai Climate Week

In this Takaro Kids episode, the hosts recap major recent events, noting the Winter Olympics in Italy ending on 22 February and the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup running until March. They then focus on two major summits in India: the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi and the first Mumbai Climate Week. They discuss the AI summit’s global participation (including CEOs from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Adobe), its first-time location in the Global South, PM Modi’s inauguration, and key themes such as making AI accessible and regulating it as AI grows more powerful. They also talk about India building AI-supporting infrastructure like semiconductor manufacturing and server capacity, including Adani’s announced $100 billion plan for sustainable AI infrastructure, and explain the energy and cooling demands of large server farms. Shifting to Mumbai Climate Week, they describe the citywide buzz (including Gateway of India lighting), strong youth turnout, and themes such as renewable energy, making cities more livable, and financing for climate mitigation and adaptation—especially given India’s coal-based electricity. They mention attendees including government officials, Hillary Clinton, Sachin Tendulkar, astronaut Rakesh Sharma, and astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, including insights about Earth’s changing appearance from space and the importance of recycling resources. The episode ends with a quiz asking which gas is beneficial in the stratosphere but a pollutant in the troposphere (options: hydrogen, nitrogen, ozone, carbon dioxide), and notes that last week’s Winter Olympics medal-tally prediction winner will be announced next week along with this week’s quiz winner.

00:00 Mics, Camera, Action! Welcome to Takaro Kids
00:05 Sports roundup: Winter Olympics & ICC Men’s T20 World Cup
00:43 India AI Impact Summit in Delhi: why it matters
02:55 Regulating AI + building India’s AI infrastructure (chips & servers)
05:11 AI’s energy footprint and the link to Mumbai Climate Week
06:20 Mumbai Climate Week highlights: buzz, youth, and city solutions
08:53 Climate money talk: mitigation vs adaptation (and India’s coal challenge)
11:14 Who attended? Leaders, celebrities, and astronauts’ view from space
13:36 This week’s quiz: which gas is good up high but bad down low?
15:15 Last week’s quiz update + how to enter and win
16:31 Wrap-up: keep tracking the Olympics & send your answers

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Transcript

Debkanya 0:00

Mics. camera. Action. Welcome to another episode of Takaro Kids. We spoke about two big sporting events that took place in India just last week. They were

Kiran Menon 0:12

Well, both Were not in India. One was in India and the other one was in Italy. Yeah.

Debkanya 0:17

off on the wrong foot. Yes, one happening in Italy. That's the Winter Olympics. It's going to actually get over very soon on the 22nd of February,

Kiran Menon 0:26

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 0:26

and you have the ICC men's T 20 World Cup, which is happening. That's going to go until March. So yeah, lots of sporting action in the country, but on the other hand, this week has seen some completely different kind of action. Very, very big and important news there. India saw the India AI Impact Summit, which took place in Delhi, and we also had our very first global climate summit called the Mumbai Climate Week.

Kiran Menon 0:55

So, like you said, two very, very important, you know, summits and the AI Summit, for example, is something that actually has happened for the last few years ever since AI kind of became big right. It started off, I think in London in 2023. Then it went to South Korea, then it went to Paris last year, and now it's India's turn. And what's surprising, or what's very interesting is it's for the first time in what's called the Global South. So the AI India Summit, the India AI Summit, okay, um, was very,

Debkanya 1:33

AI

Kiran Menon 1:33

interesting.

Debkanya 1:33

Impact

Kiran Menon 1:34

Impact Summit. Exactly. You're right. In New Delhi, multiple CEOs from different countries, multiple, uh, prime ministers and government officials from other countries coming in. It was super interesting. So the CEO of Anthropic, the CEO of OpenAI, the CEO of Google, Adobe, everyone was here for this and is still here for this. AI is the, talk of the town globally, everyone's talking about AI. So it's a very important conference and it kind of brings together all of these countries, businessmen, scientists, young people, all of them coming to talk about what AI is gonna do, where it's heading, and how to actually develop it. Um, you know, with a very sustainable and equal view. So it's not just about AI being available to people who have money or people who have access to it, but how does AI become accessible to everyone in the world? What was interesting though is one very, very big absence, which was Bill Gates. He was supposed to be here, uh, who's the founder of Microsoft, but he never made it. But yeah, a lot of the other leaders were in that one place. And Modi, our prime minister, inaugurated and started the entire thing as well.

Debkanya 2:55

You know, Normally when these summits happen and so many people gather in one room, there are also these partnerships that people talk about, right? How do we work with each other, like you said, okay, yes. One part was how do we make it more accessible, you know, help it reach more people. Also how to, I think the conversation also went towards how do we control or regulate ai, the technology

Kiran Menon 3:13

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 3:14

it can go in so many different directions, right? I mean,

Kiran Menon 3:17

Yeah. Yeah.

Debkanya 3:18

is that AI is getting smarter and smarter. In fact, now we are using AI to build ai. So you're using artificial intelligence to actually build more artificial intelligence. So it could well go. Spiraling out of control, so you have to

Kiran Menon 3:32

Yeah.

Debkanya 3:32

it to some extent and regulate it and have some rules about how we use AI and what we are using it for.

Kiran Menon 3:37

Yeah.

Debkanya 3:38

a lot of those conversations happened as well.

Kiran Menon 3:40

There are and, and in fact, you know what's interesting is if you look at it today from a February 2026 perspective, a lot of the AI products are being developed in the US or in other regions. India is actually building for infrastructure. To support this AI growth. So there's a lot of talk about, you know, the government over the last two years pushing for semiconductor units being set up in India. Semiconductor units are the manufacturing facilities where they will manufacture the chips that are required to run and process all of this AI in your computers and on servers. In fact, talking about servers, India is now pushing for a lot of server infrastructure to be set up in India. You know, AI needs hundreds and thousands and thousands of these computers, servers to work together to be able to crunch that amount of data and give you those answers so quickly. So when you go to ChatGPT and say, Hey, you know, um, give me a summary of the New Delhi AI Impact Summit. It is actually going through websites, it's going through news articles, it's going through so many different things to give you that summary in just a few seconds. So it's a lot of computing power that's required and that when infrastructure is something that India is. Starting to set up a lot. In fact, um, just a day or two ago, uh, Adani announced that they're gonna be spending about $100 billion to set up sustainable AI infrastructure and server farms. And, and that sustainable word is very, very important because it also lends very well into the other topic, which is the Mumbai Climate Week. Because all of this raw computing power requires energy, requires electricity. It also requires a lot of cooling, which is water or you know, ACs or whatever it may be, to kind of cool these massive server farms. And when you're thinking about these server farms. It is huge. I mean, I can't even explain how big it could be. It could be the size of an airport, for example, right? You go to Bangalore Airport, Bombay Airport, server farms are like that big, right? So imagine the amount of energy that is being used to power those computers and to then cool them down as well.

Debkanya 5:54

And when you say server farms, they're not farms like with trees and plants and rows of like cabbages and cauliflowers. You are talking about a lot of space being used up just to power AI. So therefore they say, right, please don't use AI to like generate a random cat meme or some, do some silly things. Use it responsibly. Use it well till we figure out how to make it more efficient to actually use AI.

Kiran Menon 6:20

Yeah. And, and like I said, it leads very well into the Mumbai Climate Week, which actually happened before the, uh, AI Impact Summit. Debbie being in Bombay and being in Mum. What did you see and what did you hear about the climate week?

Debkanya 6:38

Well, there was a lot of, um, I mean there was advertising all around. In fact, the gateway of India was lit up with, you know, promotions, talking about Climate Week. They actually lit it up fully, uh, talking about the fact that it's happening and because it's a

Kiran Menon 6:50

Were they using sustainable energy for that lighting up or was it

Debkanya 6:54

I

Kiran Menon 6:54

electricity? Yeah,

Debkanya 6:55

hope so. I didn't look into

Kiran Menon 6:56

otherwise it would be.

Debkanya 6:59

true. But I mean, no, I think what, what I noticed was there was a lot of positive energy. There was a lot of buzz about Mumbai Climate Week. Now, the very fact that a global summit like climate weeks have been happening around the world for a while, right?

Kiran Menon 7:12

Yeah.

Debkanya 7:13

Various cities have Climate Week. There's a San Francisco Climate Week, there's a Cincinnati Climate Week. There's one in South Korea. There's one, you know, various various countries around the world. And cities around the world have hosted this. And this is the first time that we have a climate week in India.

Kiran Menon 7:25

Yeah.

Debkanya 7:26

And that tells you something that this is a topic, this is a subject that we are taking very seriously in our country. And that

Kiran Menon 7:33

It is

Debkanya 7:33

good news.

Kiran Menon 7:35

very good news, and in fact, both of them colliding together. You know, one after the other is also really big for India.

Debkanya 7:41

Yeah, absolutely and, and great footfall from what I've, you know, seen and heard lots of people, lots of very young people actually also turned up at, uh, Mumbai Climate

Kiran Menon 7:50

Oh, yeah?

Debkanya 7:50

they were curious. They wanted to

Kiran Menon 7:52

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 7:52

wanted to see what was going on. Lots of people who are already working the space. It's amazing to see the number of people who are

Kiran Menon 7:58

That's awesome.

Debkanya 7:59

and working and researching and,

Kiran Menon 8:01

Yep.

Debkanya 8:02

trying to figure out how to make this world a better place every single day. Another interesting thing for me was the focus was on various topics. Um, obviously everything eventually was about how to, you know, protect our planet, how to stop polluting it, how to use better sources of energy, like you said, right? Uh, sustainable sources of energy. Maybe it's wind, solar, water, whatever it might be, instead of, you know, the usual fossil fuels that we use. And it was also about cities. Right, which I found extremely fascinating, Because you talk about climate change and you know, everyone across the world feels climate change, but you feel it in cities. And I think, and cities are also the biggest contributors to, you know, a lot of the pollutants, to a lot of the heat that is

Kiran Menon 8:45

Yeah. Yeah.

Debkanya 8:46

So many of the topics we're talking about, how can we make our cities better? How can we

Kiran Menon 8:51

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 8:51

more livable, more sustainable? The other important topic they talked about was how can we make sure that there's more money, in this space so that we can come up with

Kiran Menon 8:59

What does that mean? More money.

Debkanya 9:02

Yeah, of course. Because everything needs money, right? If you want, for example, there are two things that you would need money for in something like this. One, as they say is mitigation. Second is adaptation, right? One is how do you reduce fossil fuels, for example,

Kiran Menon 9:16

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Debkanya 9:17

How do you ensure that you're using better energy sources? How do you ensure people

Kiran Menon 9:22

fossil fuels basically mean, you know, petrol, diesel, all of those kind of things that we use for our vehicles mostly now. Yeah.

Debkanya 9:30

exactly. How do we transition? Because it costs money, right?

Kiran Menon 9:33

What's very interesting, is that in India, all our electricity, majority of it is actually coming from coal. Coal, again is a fossil fuel. Right. We are actually digging earth, we are picking out the coal, we're converting it, and, uh, generating electricity, which then comes into most of our homes. Most of India is coal. so how do you kind of move away from that into, like you were saying, renewables.

Debkanya 9:58

So, exactly. You need money, right, to make these changes happen. You have to have funds that will go and say, Hey, we are gonna create a new project, which is going to be better. So that is one. Which is reduce the uh, uh, ways in which we are contributing towards climate change. And second is, how do we adapt? How do we prepare ourselves? Because, and we have spoken about this during the COP 30 as well, if you

Kiran Menon 10:20

Yeah,

Debkanya 10:21

it is about, uh, becoming better at preparing for the changes that are happening around us. We

Kiran Menon 10:27

and humans have always been very adaptive or adaptable. Adaptive adaptable, what is the right word?

Debkanya 10:34

I think both work, Yeah, we are. We are extremely flexible in a lot of ways. Uh, and we do learn and we are very smart. We learn how to make the best of the situation we are in. But sometimes it's hard, for example, a lot of, a lot of island countries are most affected by global warming, right? Because

Kiran Menon 10:51

Yeah.

Debkanya 10:52

levels are rising and they're concerned, you know, the, the land that we live on, our homes are on, are all going to be submerged underwater. How do we help them prepare for a situation like this? How do we help people, like you said, people from a different socioeconomic background, people who cannot afford to live in fancy towers and homes, but they have to deal with the heat.

Kiran Menon 11:10

Yeah, yeah.

Debkanya 11:11

Is there something we can do to help them, uh, deal

Kiran Menon 11:14

So who are the, who are the people who are at this conference? Who were the kind of folks who were there? Were they scientists? Were they, you know who, who was there?

Debkanya 11:23

That was the interesting thing. You had all kinds of people, you have people from the government, you

Kiran Menon 11:27

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 11:28

from the, from the Maharashtra government obviously, because it

Kiran Menon 11:31

Yeah. Yeah.

Debkanya 11:32

Uh, so there was a lot of, you know, uh, focus on how Maharashtra is going to, you know, do things differently. There was Hillary Clinton. Secretary Hillary Clinton. She was a

Kiran Menon 11:40

Ooh.

Debkanya 11:41

US secretary. She was there to talk about, you know, her stance on climate change. Sachin Tendulkar came

Kiran Menon 11:47

Oh wow.

Debkanya 11:48

to, to give his sup, show his support, had two super interesting people. That is our first India's first ever astronaut Rakesh Sharma. And

Kiran Menon 11:57

Yes.

Debkanya 11:58

Current astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, who just went to space. He was in the International Space Station for I think, some 18 days. And he just came back last year in June or something. uh, he

Kiran Menon 12:07

Yeah.

Debkanya 12:08

as well. And I mean, it was interesting. I was reading about it and they were talking about how your perspective changes when you see, earth, our beautiful planet from space. of course Rakesh Sharma also said that, you know, one of the things that astronauts have reported is what was once described as a vibrant blue dot our

Kiran Menon 12:27

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 12:28

that they could see is now a little bit more gray, which is sad to hear.

Kiran Menon 12:32

Oh, that's, that's not very nice. Yeah.

Debkanya 12:35

That's not nice,

Kiran Menon 12:35

But it's also interesting, right? Because, uh, when you're in space, you also live with a lot less from a resource perspective. So maybe that becomes a, a way to learn how we can all live with a lot less.

Debkanya 12:47

Shukla did talk about that. The fact that there are no resources and everything is recycled, right? In fact,

Kiran Menon 12:52

Oh, yeah,

Debkanya 12:53

thing that, today's coffee is also tomorrow's coffee. I mean, it's kind of gross, right? But what it basically means is everything. The water you drink, the

Kiran Menon 13:02

yeah, yeah,

Debkanya 13:03

the air you are breathing, every single thing is recycled and

Kiran Menon 13:07

yeah.

Debkanya 13:08

as they say, circularity. And

Kiran Menon 13:10

Correct.

Debkanya 13:11

We can do it in this space, then I'm sure we can figure out how to make it happen on

Kiran Menon 13:15

That's super interesting actually. Yeah.

Debkanya 13:18

Yeah.

Kiran Menon 13:19

Makes a lot of sense.

Debkanya 13:20

I think

Kiran Menon 13:21

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 13:21

uh, it's been pretty phenomenal this week with the AI Summit, the Mumbai Climate Week. India is definitely making, uh, all the right kind of moves in terms of, know, making sure that we are a serious player. Okay. So the quiz question this week is, Which gas is good when it's high up in the sky, in the stratosphere. But it is really bad when it is lower down and it is actually a pollutant. so this

Kiran Menon 13:51

Interesting.

Debkanya 13:52

Yeah. When it's up around us forming a protective layer, but is a pollutant when it's lower down and is in the layer of air, which is directly above the surface of the earth. I'm gonna give

Kiran Menon 14:05

So when we breathe it, it's bad, but when it's up in almost towards space, then it's fine.

Debkanya 14:13

Stratosphere. It's great. Troposphere not great. Okay,

Kiran Menon 14:16

Okay.

Debkanya 14:17

Is the question this week. It may sound a little complicated, but it's super interesting when you do actually look into it. I urge you, do research this and then give us your answer. The options are -option one, hydrogen. Option two, nitrogen. Option three, ozone. And option four, carbon dioxide.

Kiran Menon 14:38

That's actually a tough one. Lots of options over the,

Debkanya 14:43

If you actually think about it

Kiran Menon 14:46

Yeah, I know. Mm.

Debkanya 14:47

the answer's there, so anyway, I think, I think our, our listeners will have fun. Send in your answers. Because if you send in the right answer, you could win a Takaro Kids t-shirt as well as a gift voucher. Just send in your answer to www.takarokids.com, or you can DM us on Instagram and we will pick one winner, not the first, not the last, not the second, not the third, but one lucky winner who sent in the correct answer.

Kiran Menon 15:15

On to last week's quiz and the winner. Last week we asked you to be like Paul. You remember Paul the Octopus who predicted football World Cup matches. So we wanted you to predict who would actually end with the highest medal tally in the Winter Olympics. I hope you guys have been following the Winter Olympics. It's been some amazing, amazing, uh, races and some of these athletes are just brilliant, right?

Debkanya 15:44

Gosh,

Kiran Menon 15:45

The skills, oh my God.

Debkanya 15:47

skating. Oh,

Kiran Menon 15:48

Ooh, yeah, So we are recording this episode on a Friday, but the Winter Olympics ends on Sunday the 22nd. Therefore, we are not going to give you the answer today because you know anything can happen in two days. So we will give you the answer and the winner for this quiz question and this week's quiz question together next week. Was that confusing? Maybe. But once again, last week's quiz question, and this week's quiz question will be announced. The winner will be announced next week. So

Debkanya 16:29

The winners will be announced next week.

Kiran Menon 16:29

The winner's correct. So make sure you now keep track of the Winter Olympics. Let's see if your predictions have come true, because I've already got a lot of, um, you folks who have sent in in your predictions. And also make sure you answer Debbie's question for this week,

Debkanya 16:45

yeah, which gas is good when it's high up in the sky. Not so good when it's lower down. Cool.

Kiran Menon 16:51

Until next week, it is. Bye bye.