Dataquest

Intel India Eyes AI Opportunit­ies, Plans to Develop Ecosystem

Artificial Intelligen­ce (AI) is the cutting edge in technology. It is fast getting mainstream and coming out of the confines of science fiction. The onset of AI-based technology in India is evident in the sectors of e-commerce and research, where entities

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Igot great perspectiv­es on the potential of AI at Intel’s AI Day at Bangalore recently. I also got to know the various parts that make up AI and why it is so complex. At Intel AI Day, the company deep dived into its global AI strategy, and highlighte­d how it is working with the ecosystem in India to improve solution performanc­es on Intel’s AI platforms.

Prakash Mallya, Managing Director, Intel South Asia, said, “As India undergoes rapid digital transforma­tion, the data center and the intelligen­ce behind the data collected will enable the government and industry to

make effective decisions based on algorithms. This means increasing opportunit­ies for using AI in the country, and to make this happen, Intel India is collaborat­ing with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Wipro, Julia Computing, and Calligo Technologi­es, by enabling them with AI solutions based Intel architectu­re.”

INTEL IN AI

AI is the fastest growing workload in the data center, growing at two times the overall computing market. By 2020, the industry expects more servers running data analytics than any other workload, and analytics predictors will be built into every applicatio­n. Staying ahead of this curve, Intel announced its AI strategy last year to drive breakthrou­gh performanc­e, democratiz­e access and maximize societal benefits.

Today, Intel powers 97 percent of data center servers running AI workloads and offers the most flexible, yet performanc­e-optimized portfolio of solutions. Backed by its unified approach to AI, Intel is leading the AI Computing era through its end-to-end hardware and software that is designed for building AI applicatio­ns across virtually any industry.

Intel’s collaborat­ion with companies such as Google, and the company’s acquisitio­n, including Saffron, Movidius, Nervana Systems and Mobileye, further Intel’s AI capabiliti­es, giving the company an edge, especially at a time when embedded computer vision is becoming increasing­ly important the world over.

Last month, the company also announced a cross-Intel organizati­on – the Artificial Intelligen­ce Products Group (AIPG), which will align Intel’s AI efforts, and rally the industry around a set of standards for AI that ultimately brings down costs and makes AI more accessible to more people – not only institutio­ns, government­s and large companies, as it is today. Intel also aims to set up an applied AI research lab dedicated to pushing the forefronts of computing to explore architectu­ral and algorithmi­c approaches to inform future generation­s of AI. This includes a range of solutions from the data center to edge devices, and from training to inference – all designed to enable Intel and its customers to innovate faster.

AI AT WORK

AI is the combinatio­n of various fields such as machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, reasoning systems, neural networks, deep learning, depth sensing, programmab­le systems, parallel computing and more.

AI is nothing newly invented, it has been around for decades. But it is only now that it is ready to take off. Krishnendu Chaudhury, Principal Scientist and HeadImagin­g Services, Flipkart put it well thus: “Till the midninetie­s, AI was like ‘marriage’— everybody’s excited but promises are not fulfilled. But now, it is like ‘visiting France’— it is still exciting and it lives up to its promise and there much more that can be done.”

Krishnendu points out to two reasons that got AI into the reckoning: the big one is a massive set of complex models and techniques in informatio­n processing with a simple-sounding name called deep learning and the lesser one is the set of technology developmen­ts like advances in hardware, big data and storage, and the opensource culture that help deep learning get off from concept to real world applicatio­ns.

Deep learning is complex, but it solves the very important problem of extracting abstract informatio­n using complex pattern matching with neural network analysis on huge datasets. Its applicatio­ns are myriad.

For example, Flipkart uses deep learning to give accurate search results to buyers who are looking at buying a T-shirt like the one they have in mind such as a white T-shirt with the figure of a ghostlike character or one with green and blue stripes of a particular width. The descriptio­n of the T-shirt the shopper wants to buy is not concrete, it is abstract, hence it takes a lot of processing to get the required results. Flipkart is similarly working on deep learning projects for click prediction and sales prediction which have direct business impact.

D N Narasimha Raju, Chief Executive Officer, National Institute for Smart Government, who was a panelist at the AI Day, said, “Digital transforma­tion is at the heart of government’s endeavor to connect and develop India. As high speed networks get establishe­d, a number

of disruptive changes can happen. These changes will impact productivi­ty. Data analytics and machine learning can automate processes across e-Governance, research and the private sector. It is recognized that the potential of Artificial Intelligen­ce is high in sectors such as healthcare, disaster mitigation, and financial services. In order to realize this potential, there is a need to impart and develop the required skill sets in a major way. As I understand, Intel India is engaged in this effort and it’s proactive approach in skill imparting and solution developmen­t in the area of AI by utilizing local talent and collaborat­ion will contribute significan­tly towards adoption of AI.”

The use cases for AI are limited only by imaginatio­n. AI applicatio­ns range from accelerati­ng large scale solutions, unleashing scientific discovery, augmenting human capability, and automating risky and tedious tasks. The AI wave is coming on faster than expected. AI’s impact will be bigger than even the wave of digital transforma­tion.

INTEL’S AI ECOSYSTEM INITIATIVE­S

Additional­ly, to engage students, researcher­s and developers, Intel India announced a comprehens­ive developer community initiative – the AI Developer Education Program, targeted at educating 15,000 scientists, developers, analysts, and engineers on key AI technologi­es, including Deep Learning and Machine Learning. Through 60 programs across the year, ranging from workshops, roadshows, user group and senior technology leader roundtable­s, the initiative aims at empowering this community with the knowhow for adoption of AI via technical sessions involving the use of ready-to-deploy platforms and tools for solution developmen­t.

“Our collaborat­ion with the industry and the academia will help democratiz­e AI, by reducing entry barriers for developers, data scientists and students. In India, we are targeting the BFSI, telecom, and e-commerce sectors, across High Performanc­e Computing (HPC), big data, and Internet of Things, all of which are complement­ary to AI”, he added.

According to Professor Pushpak Bhattachar­ya, Director, IIT Patna, “Research and academia are great platforms to initiate AI into the society. IIT Patna has been doing cutting edge research and developmen­t in Artificial Intelligen­ce, distribute­d computing, network security, social networks, and beyond, using data driven machine learning, as well as knowledge and deep learning based methods. Our research groups are currently working on implementa­tion of evolutiona­ry algorithms in parallel environmen­ts, and using Intel based platforms and software tools to deploy, paralleliz­e and optimize systems. Intel India has provided IIT Patna with the necessary know-how to best optimize Intel based AI platforms and technologi­es, making this collaborat­ion extremely fruitful and promising.”

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