Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has successfully hosted ‘Artificial Intelligence Conclave 2019’ under the theme ‘Artificial Intelligence: Augmenting Human Capabilities’. The conclave focused on how AI can help in revolutionizing the world as a smart, efficient and inspirational assistant to humans.

Mr Yaduvendra Mathur, Special Secretary, NITI Aayog, GoI said that the 3 pillars of the AI ecosystem are Data, hardware, and algorithm. He added that ‘AI for all’- Focus first on your consumer. “Don’t get enamored by AI and digitalization. He opined that we must analyze the need of your consumers and how best you can fulfill the needs. It is a retraining way of how to serve best to your consumers. Your POC are your cities, citizens and how can we make it easy for them using this technology,” he said.

Speaking at the Inaugural session, Mr Vinod Sood, Conclave Chairman and MD Hughes Systique said that current developments in AI have been fueled by an exponential rise in computing power increasing the accessibility and sophistication of powerful algorithms and an explosion in the volume of data available which has been enabled by the advances in cloud infrastructure to feed the AI models. He also said that we would aim at getting a deeper understanding of how companies currently manage their AI activities and how leaders address opportunities and challenges that occur.

Mr Prateek Garg, Founder, Co-Chairman, Regional Committee on AI, CII Northern Region and CEO & MD, Progressive Infotech said that AI has a potential impact of 15.7 Trillion on the global GDP by 2030 as per the global studies. He mentioned that Data is the next oil and AI is the refinery.’ He said that AI is playing a definite role in businesses which adds intelligence, achieving incredible accuracy and analyses the deeper data and discovering new data. All this is making a lot of impact on how we work and how we’ll work in the future,” expressed on AI.

Mr. Kishore Jayaram, President, Rolls-Royce India & South Asia, emphasized on how AI is disrupting the entire product life cycle in the manufacturing sector from design to manufacturing to supply chain and services. He shared that we need to accelerate innovation by using advanced data analytics, industrial AI and machine learning techniques to unlock design and operational efficiencies and thereby enhancing customer-centricity.

Mr Arnab Kumar, NITI Aayog, GoI stressed on the challenges saying that “Challenges are broadly based into three parameters often, access, affordability, and availability. He mentioned that NITI Aayog is trying to understand what are the unique challenges and problems we as a country and use technology on achieving these problems.”

Introducing the theme, Mr Ashvin Vellody, Partner, Delloite India said that AI is expected to drive the next wave of economic expansion across the globe in today’s digital age. He added that this technology is transforming the way we interact with the world. Numerous nations are taking initiatives and drafting strategies to embrace AI. He said that India also has a sense of optimism that AI will contribute to the country’s broader growth agenda since the technology, once applied correctly, has the potential to touch every facet of life and make a positive impact on various fields, such as retail, healthcare, education, manufacturing and many more.

The Conclave witnessed the presence of speakers from companies like IBM, Wipro, TCS, TATA Communications, Essel Group and many more and was attended by over 200 participants from various technology and manufacturing companies.