Speaking at a global webinar on Artificial Intelligence (AI) organised by Bennett University where telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad gave the keynote address, corporate heads from technology companies said that new-age innovations will play an important role as the world tries to fight and emerge from the shadows of Covid-19.
Sandip Patel, general manager for IBM’s India and South Asia business, said that the world has witnessed a sudden adoption of digital across governments, businesses and individuals. “Technology has emerged as a unifying force. AI is there is some shape and form around us. AI is a silent companion.”
Patel gave examples on how IBM is deploying AI and technology for local language support on Covid queries in Andhra Pradesh. “In healthcare, AI is acting as a first responder to Covid queries. We have been working to implement a Watson assistant which is hosted on ICMR portal to respond to specific queries.”
He said that AI is increasingly “everywhere and is all pervasive. Every company will become an AI company.”
Google Research (India) director Manish Gupta said that technology and AI was deployed to help the hundreds and thousands of migrant workers who were stranded when lockdown was announced. “We had quickly provided solutions so that the migrants could see food and night shelters on google maps and through google search. We even allowed voice-based queries and made it compatible with smartphones and KaiOS platform that is used on Jio.”
Gupta said that technology will play a major role in running of the world. “We are very excited about areas such as healthcare.”
NVIDIA South Asia MD Vishal Dhupar said that technology has been at the frontier of Covid 19. “We are partnering with doctors to mitigate the problem, and treat the problems. AI cameras are taking into account elevated temperatures… data-driven science has become the fourth pillar of scientific discovery.”
Prof RK Shevgaonkar, vice chancellor of Bennett University, said that technology has ensured that the disruptions due to Covid-19 do not destroy the world completely.
Also, he said that the post-Covid world will be much different to what we had till just a few months back. “During the lockdown, it is clear that many processes that we were doing earlier require corrections… but in a positive sense. We need to start a new paradigm which is more sustainable and based on technology.”
