National Testing Agency (NTA) Director General Abhishek Singh on Sunday called on BRICS member nations to forge common frameworks governing the use of artificial intelligence in education, warning that unchecked AI adoption risks eroding students' cognitive thinking. Singh made the proposal at the BRICS Summit 2026 in New Delhi, where 37 deep-tech startups were also presenting AI-driven governance solutions.

The AI Concern in Classrooms

Singh flagged a growing consensus among governments worldwide about the risks of excessive AI use among students. 'Students and those in education are all facing challenges arising from the adoption of AI technology. We have seen how several countries are considering blocking the use of AI, especially among school and college students, and how excessive use of technology can impact cognitive thinking,' he said.

He argued that BRICS nations need to collectively develop 'common frameworks and assessment frameworks that can be shared across' member states — rather than each country responding in isolation to what is now a shared educational challenge.

India's Exam Ecosystem as a Digital Public Good

Singh also outlined India's ongoing efforts to overhaul its public examination infrastructure, hinting that the final model could eventually be exported to other nations as a digital public good. 'We are in the process of consolidating and strengthening our own systems… once we have perfected it for our students in India, then, of course, the next step will naturally be to share it with the larger world community,' he said.

He specifically described the assessment and testing framework as potentially becoming 'another digital public good, a digital public infrastructure' — drawing a parallel with India's broader digital public infrastructure stack.

AI as an Exam Tool, Not Just a Threat

While raising caution about AI's risks, Singh also pointed to its constructive applications within the exam ecosystem. 'The use of AI can be done in multiple ways. Not only for item generation… and especially for translating questions into various languages when time is limited. So, it helps in using technology to generate a larger volume of questions, conduct validations, perform checks, and carry out translations in less time,' he said.

This dual framing — AI as both a risk to manage and a tool to leverage — reflects the broader tension that education ministries across the Global South are navigating.

BRICS Delhi Declaration and What Comes Next

Singh indicated that India would use the Delhi Declaration, adopted at the summit, as the basis for follow-up cooperation. 'We'll explore in what ways we can carry forward the Delhi Declaration… especially with regard to contributing and sharing knowledge and best practices in the field of technology,' he said.

He also stressed that Global South nations have a particular stake in shaping AI governance: 'A lot of expectations are there, especially from this group, from the countries of the Global South, on how we can make the governance of AI more equitable, more balanced, more open.'

With AI regulation in education still nascent globally, Singh's proposals position India — through the NTA — as a potential standard-setter for the developing world's approach to technology in high-stakes assessments.