IITians and global though leaders discussed applications of Artificial Intelligence in different sectors at the two-day TCS – Pan IIT Conclave 2019 on Artificial Intelligence organized at IIT Delhi
New Delhi: Minister of State for Statistics and Programme Implementation Vijay Goel has reinforced the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) across industries to propel India to be future ready.
Mr Goyal was speaking after inaugurating the two-day TCS – Pan IIT Conclave 2019. The theme of the conclave was – Artificial Intelligence: What does the future hold for India?
Taking this thought further, TCS Chief Technology Officer K Ananth Krishnan shared his vision for AI’s future in India.
Various sessions through the day, covered the importance and growth of AI across sectors. The session on AI for Social Good witnessed a riveting discussion addressing the fears associated with the new technology.
The panel led by Dr. P Anandan, Chief Executive Officer, Wadhwani AI highlighted that the new technology need not necessarily compete with us and rather complement our efforts to magnify the positive impact for betterment of the society at large. The session also featured Ministry of Electronics and Information technology Secretary Ajay Sawhney.
The session on AI for Education, showcased the role of AI in re-defining India’s education landscape with a greater focus on improved learning outcomes. Session was moderated by G. S. Raghavan, Professor, IIIT- Bangalore, who shared his outlook on the opportunities and challenges within the education sector.
Sudha Ram, Professor, CSE and IS, University of Arizona and Anand Rangarajan, Director, Google emphasized, “Key is content creation and curation of information. AI is really helping with predictive suggestions towards sieving information on the web. Hyper-personalization – it is now possible for you to have test applications to train you better on your weaknesses. We need to focus on creating more engaging content for the students to build connect.”
A critical question that confronts policy makers is how to think about human employment in an era of increasingly intelligent machines that are capable of sophisticated decision making. The session on The Future of Work, focused on this issue.
The discussion was led by Surjit Bhalla, Member, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India who shared insights on policy making has to be re looked before conversations on future, training for new jobs are developed, “In addition to the temples of wisdom referring i.e. the IITs, a far greater focus is needed to upgrade the primary and secondary education. We have to step back and re- think several policy decisions.”
Artificial Intelligence has transformed the manufacturing industry in more ways than one and the session on AI in manufacturing saw a gripping discussion on the contribution of AI in defining the future of the manufacturing industry as well as the potential challenges that must be addressed. Session Leader, P P Chakraborty, Professor – Director, IIT Kharagpur shared his thoughts and emphasized on prognosis in manufacturing and its significance in quality, safety and lastingness of tools used in manufacturing processes.
In the same session, Dr Satyam Priyadarshy enunciated the importance of digital twin in the manufacturing industry. He deliberated on how a digital twin continuously learns and updates itself using sensor to optimize operations & maintenance of manufacturing processes. He said that building self-healing system is the future of oil & gas industry.
Dr. Aloknath De, Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Samsung said, “AI’s contribution in manufacturing is dependent on three pillars- people, process & technology. If AI is used as a vital contributor- people’s safety could be made better, processes could be made more efficient & predictive and lastly, AI to make better products & designs. He also said that, AI can be one of the major tools to compress constraints in the manufacturing processes reducing human intervention.”
As we become increasingly dependent on the technology and it embeds deeper into our lives, we also expose ourselves to higher vulnerability owing to possibilities of hacks, systematic biases and breach of data privacy. Thus, making it imperative to understand and create boundaries and regulatory frameworks for technology and these were discussed at length during the session – Ethics, Privacy and Security of AI Systems.
Session leader, Prof. Rajat Moona, Director, IIT Raipur further elaborated on the concern. Drawing analogy with fundamental rights, elaborating on the fact why government and private organizations ought to levy judicial control of data, Shyam Divan, Seniorr Advocate, Supreme Court said, “Lot of rights are interdependent. If you pluck one away, the others get impacted.
For instance, if freedom is speech is impinged, then other related rights like freedom of movement, making political and religious choices get affected. Hence, control on data comes with a rider.” He suggested a three point framework to identify core institution values; environmental values and values related to national and public interest.
Finally, the session AI for Agriculture highlighted the potential of technology to enhance the efficiency and productivity of the agricultural sector. Right from selecting seeds to harvesting crop, AI holds potential to complement human effort at each stage of the farming industry. Accurate weather prediction, soil monitoring, early detection of pest infestation and disease identification are other areas of successful application of AI.
The session was led by Prof. T A Gonsalves, Director, IIT Mandi further elaborated on these efforts. Professor T V Prabhakar, CSE, IITK said that, ‘A farmer’s consistency doesn’t depend on one crop. In order to edify the agriculture sector, all we require is vision and leadership. Sriram Raghavan, VP, IBM Research & CTO IBM India/South Asia said, “We need digitization in agriculture accompanied with educating our farmers about its use”.
Besides these engaging and enlightening sessions, the conclave also hosted the he first PanIIT AI Hackathon 2019, that aims to promote AI and ML among the wider community of young software and AI professionals and showcase the talent among them and an exhibition area to provide an excellent opportunity for exhibitors to interact directly with the delegates, comprising of eminent IIT alumni, policy makers and heads of large companies.
The conclave was organized by PAN IIT Alumni India (PIAI) and has brought together leaders in academics and research, business and industry, and policy-makers. The platform helped dive deep into challenges and opportunities with AI.
It helped build a framework for implementation of AI in several industries. The recommendations from the conclave will be aligned along academia, government, industry and startup partners by the PAN IIT AI forum in the coming months.
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