As an Official Pre-Summit Event of the AI Impact Summit 2026, on December 3 2025, the Datasphere Initiative’s Global Sandboxes Forum, UNDP, and Kalpa Impact will host an online event to discuss the interaction between AI and digital public infrastructure (DPI) and the role iterative and testing initiatives such as sandboxes can play in supporting inclusive design and deployment.
Date: December 3 2025,
Time: 17.00 – 18.30 IST
Location: Online (hybrid format with in-person presence TBC in Delhi)
Background
As countries look to invest in DPI initiatives, many are considering the value and connection between AI and DPI. On the one hand, AI can help drive and support DPI services and infrastructure and at the same time DPI can provide vast amounts of data necessary to power AI. But what comes first? How can they work together considering countries’ different cultural and development contexts ? What are the risks and real benefits for people and the planet? And importantly, how can their inter-relationship support linguistic and cultural diversity, tackle gender biases, and ensure often marginalized groups are not left behind?
Bringing together governments, businesses, representatives from civil society and academia, the side event will explore the DPI journey and how experimentation and iterative approaches and tools such as sandboxes could be used to better understand the benefits and challenges of leveraging AI in digital public infrastructure.
Expert speakers from around the world will bring their knowledge and experience in deploying DPI, building AI and designing sandboxes.
Following the event, participants will be invited to share a DPI challenge where experimentation could be helpful. Proposals will be reviewed and three will be selected as challenges to be addressed in the DPI Sandbox Co-Creation Lab. The co-creation lab will test three contributions in a hands-on practical experimentation session where participants will co-create their DPI sandbox prototype. Datasphere, Kalpa Impact and UNDP team plans to host this Co-Creation Lab during or around the India AI Impact Summit.
