As the 4th stage of Industrial Evolution pulls the world into its realm, the need to know the catalysts of progress and prosperity arises as a much needed one today. Like how Internet revolutionized the world in early 2000s, advancements such as Machine Learning, Automation, IoT etc are going to be the new game-changers in almost all industries.
The need to know about how these new technologies could help businesses grow and also how it could contribute to the progress of mankind, the Confederation of Indian Industry, Coimbatore Chapter held a conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Computing on 24 July, 2019 at the Residency Towers.
The Theme of the conference was Applying Artificial Intelligence to Business. It was attended by the members of CII especially those from its Education & III Panel and ICT Panel of CII Coimbatore Zone. The topics discussed under this conference includes ‘A.I. and Society’, ‘Machine Learning and Deep Learning’, ‘Robotics’, ‘Natural Language Processing’ and ‘Big Data&Cloud Computing’.
Dr. Senthil Ganesh, Convenor, Education&III Panel, CII Coimbatore Zone presented the opening remarks. He said lot of us think that A.I. is going to take away the jobs of people in future which he said is not going to be the case. He called for combination of people and technology and not just people or just machines. He said the question we have ask ourselves today is not how to create smarter machine but how to connect people and machines together, so that as a group we can solve things better than any individual group or machines, and towards that end the conference has been structured.
He said the conference focuses on how to deploy A.I. strategically in business applications and about ethics in today’s machine age, and much more. He traced the evolution and reminisced the pioneers of A.I. such as Alan Turing, Marvin Menskey, Patrick Winston, Allen Newell, Herbert Simon and Edward H. Shortliffe whose work laid the foundation on what A.I. today has been built upon.
With their groundwork, we now have Google Assistant, SIRI and so many A.I. Tech in our daily life. Today big companies like Google, Amazon, IBM all invest huge amount in A.I. He emphasized that A.I. can make a huge positive difference in business and while closing echoed Patrick Winston’s words ” No doubt that A.I. does amazing work but they don’t see like us, they don’t think like us, and they don’t they think at all. What they focus on is perceiving and recognizing. They are an important engineering triumph, and important part of the story and not the whole story.”
Ramesh Babu, MD, Velan Valves India and Ramadas Menon, VP, Technologies and Analytics, Bharat Light & Power delivered Special Addresses. Ramesh Babu said that in the last forty years there has been tremendous growth due to the internet and technology. ” We are at an inflection point today, and these inflection point are to take us to the next level of living; the global standard of living has to go up essentially by the tools which we ‘ll use more and more in the decades to come” , he said.
Talking about Cloud computing in business, he said it is a disruptive technology which offers accelerated approach to economic growth and connects people to data and resources anywhere. He said Cloud Computing has benefited his concern as the fixed costs have come down, server spaces have come down and he stated the expenses have really gone low with Cloud tech. Mentioning A.I.’s benefits in business, he said it assists greatly in making decisions such as in basic screening of local candidates. The bias or favoritism is removed. A.I. has much to offer and this is the one of the first set of benefits of A.I. which will evolve in future.
Ramadas Menon spoke on how A.I. could optimize and make energy consumption efficient, predict machines’ weakness and efficiency etc. He briefed on how the A.I. tech – Machine Vision could provide automatic inspection based on images captured via camera. So when a cat or a dog crosses a fence, it is identified not as a threat/intruder but when a human does, he is identified to be intruding. He then touched upon the types of A.I. and Machine Learning and how its benefits could be reaped.
Dr.N.Raveendran, Member, ICT Panel CII Coimbatore Zone delivered the closing remarks and suggested that the ideas discussed in the conference should be taken to the academic circles.