NEED TO CONNECT RURAL INDIA TO THE DIGITAL HIGHWAY
How can Artificial Intelligence or AI be brought into play in India? Building of interfaces between man and machine; connecting rural India to the digital highway, creating a balance between developing AI and society were some solutions suggested at a symposium, AI and Society, held recently at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad.
Keynote speaker Prof Mark Fox from the University of Toronto said intelligent systems had a key role to play in India’s smart cities. Jayesh Ranjan, secretary of IT and communications, govt of telangana, discussed the societal perspective of AI. There was lack of complete connectivity in the Indian society as the rural population was not on the digital highway. Such challenges prevented large-scale adoption of AI in the social sphere of a country like India.
K Ananth Krishnan, CTO, TCS talked about further integrating AI in solving the problems of and developing India. He emphasised on the integration of smart power grids to avoid power cuts. In his talk on vision intelligence and its applications, Prof C V Jawahar of IIIT Hyderabad discussed the possibilities of mass implementation and autonomous navigation and internet vision using the AI technology. Technology has allowed us to understand images, objects and helped us reach a more accurate system. Now more efficient man machine interfaces can be built, he said.
Talking about the need to reach people at the bottom of the pyramid, Prof Raj Reddy of Carnegie Mellon University and chairman of IIIT Hyderabad said technology should be used to reach the people at the bottom of the pyramid.