AI has become a way of life: Telstra MD

Bengaluru: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more than a technology and has become a way of life, N.T. Arunkumar, MD and Country Head and Head of Innovation, Telstra India, said on Thursday.

“AI is more than technology, it is a way of life. Hence, the country needs to shift from being a service provider to becoming a global leader in the industry, a goal worth working towards,” Arunkumar said during a panel discussion on AI for Growth, Evolution & Technology’ at the Bengaluru Tech Summit-2021.

He pointed out the increasing pivot towards expertise in building this futuristic tech and its applications in everyday life ranging from agriculture to healthcare, defence to manufacturing, to public services. Democratising its usage and closing the digital gap would transform society, he said.

Arunkumar said, “When we look at Digital India, we have transformed it from more than a campaign with India processing the highest digital payments in October 2021 surpassing China.” The contribution of this technology projects over $10-15 billion of the global GDP, translating to three to four per cent of India’s GDP, he added.

Addressing the gathering, Prof S. Sadagopan, former director of the IIIT-B said the academic world’s response to this tech has been really fast and data analytics essentials programmes have been introduced in various institutions.

This aims at capability and capacity creation to tackle challenges associated with the supply side, bringing in more inferential thinking for which he asks, “to have a feel for data, without it you cannot be a data scientist. Ready-to-use skills are to be developed and fostered by blending social sciences with data sciences,” he said.

During the discussion, K. Ananth Krishnan, executive vice-president and chief technology officer of TCS, said potential usage of new techniques this technology offers is immense.

Vivek Raghavan, Chief Product Manager and Biometric Architect, UIAI, said, “The AI is used to build large-scale incremental digital systems, right from From Adhaar to UPI.”Talking about AI in judiciary, he said the work is on in terms of figuring out the ways to easy access, reduce delays in justice delivery, and make judicial texts available in different languages, as has been implemented in countries like Bangladesh. Open Nyay’ has been an open-source effort to create benchmarks for different kinds of AI using judicial data, he added.