Technology helped industries formulate strategy, adapt to changing future

Addressing the FICCI's 93rd Annual General Meeting on a fireside chat, industry leaders such as Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft, Dr Eric Schmidt, ex-Chairman Alphabet and Chairman of National Security Commission on AI (NSCAI), Nivruti Rai, Country Head, Intel India & Vice President, DPG, Intel Technology India Pvt Ltd. amongst others highlighted the role of technological developments and trends in the artificial intelligence (AI) space and how businesses can utilise AI in the new normal.

In conversation with FICCI President Dr Sangita Reddy, Nadella said, "Despite the constraint caused by the pandemic, digital technology is being adopted at scale for core resilience, not only for future transformation but for business continuity, which is the biggest structural change globally. The ability to use digital tools and our built-in infrastructure and capability around the digital track is going to create resilience and transformation."

Right from manufacturing, health, education, government, and service sectors, artificial intelligence and digital technology are being accelerated in every sector since COVID-19 outbreak. Amidst all this, data analytics, speech recognition and machine learning have helped industries formulate strategy and adapt to a changing future.

Commenting on the future, Nadella added that the broad paradigms are re-shaping the expectations, especially the exponential changes and the exponential change is technology. "The innovation in India around digital infrastructure in every field, from financial services, healthcare to retail is tremendous due to the ubiquity of computing fabric that is available through every Indian business and every Indian citizen," he added.

 A sizeable portion of India's $5 trillion economy size is expected to come from the research and development of AI in India. While the country moves towards manufacturing 4.0, AI is set to play a crucial role in spurring growth. Added India is in a unique position to thrive on the global digital wave with AI as its pivot.

Commenting on the potential of AI, Dr Schmidt explained, "AI is a game-changer and the most powerful tool in generations for expanding knowledge, freedom, and increasing knowledge. Science and engineering will leverage Artificial Intelligence." Strong AI partnerships will be important to renew and protect individual rights, restricting commercial competition based on fair rules, and strengthening defence ties.

 As the new AI world is full of distributed intelligence, it is ushering an era of human capacity and intelligence too. "In the future AI-based technology will ensure affordable and excellent quality healthcare with safer roads," said Rai of Intel.

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