'We're Living In Indian Century': Researcher Nick Booker At NDTV Summit

Consultant Nick Booker, who advises international universities, companies, government agencies and investors on building engagement with India, has given congratulatory messages to India in advance because according to him, the 21st century marks the re-emergence of Indian civilisation.

"I believe that we are now living in the first Indian decade of what will prove to be the Indian century and I'm going to show you a little bit of why I believe that to be the case," Booker said at a session titled 'How Ancient India Made Artificial Intelligence Possible' at the NDTV World Summit in Delhi today.

He compared the approach of ancient Greek and European thinkers and Indian thinkers in the millennia that preceded this one - the Europeans were into something which is called axiomatic model making by modern scientists.

"So they believed in self-evident truths, they believed in creating a model and then you go out and you find the data and you kind of make it fit your model, your way of understanding," Booker said.

"It's very easy to be logical and rational on that basis but it isn't actually, interestingly, necessarily grounded in reality. It's grounded in a model that is then applied to reality. India specialised in something which has been called by Roddam Narasimha, fantastic Indian academic from IISc, as 'computational positivism' about looking at the world, looking at reality rather than interpreting it and changing your models and your computations based on that reality..." he said.

Booker illustrated this with an example: if all monkeys climb trees, and we agree that a porcupine is a monkey; therefore, porcupines can climb trees.

"This is a logical statement. It's an argument that makes sense. Monkeys climb trees, porcupine's a monkey, the porcupine climbs trees. There's only one problem: porcupines don't climb trees. So although the first statement is true, the second premise is false and therefore the conclusion is also false," Booker said. "But if you believe the premises and you follow the logic, then you come to the conclusion that porcupines climb trees."

In summary, Booker showed that the axiomatic model-making he suggested is European, while 'computational positivism' is more Indian.

Returning to the porcupine example, he said, "So it accepts the axiom and concludes porcupine climbs trees, whereas computational positivism would reject the false premise based on data, based on experience."

"The AI parallel is that with aligned and constitutional systems, which is what ChatGPT, Anthropic, some of these models are doing, they can make these mistakes, whereas something that's just grounded on the data will give you the answers in the data. If the data is wrong, it will give you a wrong answer," he said.

#NDTVWorldSummit | Nick Booker (@Indo_Genius), Co-Founder at IndoGenius Explains How Ancient India Made Artificial Intelligence Possible#NDTVWorldSummit2025 pic.twitter.com/0JTf3OmKS5

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Booker said the availability of metaphors is one of the greatest and most important reasons for anyone learning about other cultures, especially India.

"The mythology, the stories, the historical examples, the more you learn about things, the more you're able to understand other things that fit those similar patterns, and you're able to spot connections. And I've been doing that ever since I came here [India]. My whole mind has been opened up to entirely new ways of seeing the world, and some of that is by applying stories and examples that I've learned about in India into other contexts. So the availability of metaphors is one of India's great gifts to the world," he said.

As co-founder and CEO of IndoGenius, Booker has over the years created some of India's largest experiential learning programmes. More than 1,600 international students have participated in IndoGenius's in-person study abroad initiatives, while over 10,000 have joined virtually.

His work includes helping universities establish local representation in India, managing research collaborations such as the Obama-Singh Grant, and supporting institutions in designing India-specific strategies and business plans for new campuses.

About NDTV World Summit 2025

NDTV World Summit 2025 is centred around the theme 'Edge of the Unknown: Risk. Resolve. Renewal.' The two-day gathering is an invitation to venture beyond boundaries and borders - to explore the unfamiliar in pursuit of a more conscious, collective future.

The 2025 edition of the NDTV World Summit brings together an extraordinary gathering of minds - heads of state, cultural icons, business architects, innovators, and voices of moral imagination to engage in a new kind of dialogue. One rooted in courageous questioning, in thoughtful exploration of what it means to navigate complexity with clarity and conscience.