Despite India's rapid advances in technology, many companies and researchers have not fully utilized the potential of AI.
In terms of the global competitive landscape of artificial intelligence (AI), India is gradually showing signs of fatigue. A report released by LinkedIn shows that the number of artificial intelligence engineers in the United States is significantly ahead, reaching 850,000, followed by India and China, reaching 150,000 and 50,000 respectively.
However, with the high attention of China and the US governments and the continuous increase in investment in the field of artificial intelligence, China and the United States have already taken the lead in the global field of artificial intelligence, and India has now become a "chaser".
For example, Alibaba 's artificial intelligence software beat Stanford students in a test of 100,000 questions, scoring 10 percentage points higher than human competitors.
The Chinese government announced that it will establish a $2 billion artificial intelligence laboratory and will apply technology to the military and civilian fields. Therefore, China is actively preparing to make artificial intelligence a future for human progress and liberate human beings from repetitive work. So, what prevents India's artificial intelligence technology from improving?
China is investing heavily in the field of mathematics, but India currently does not have many doctorates in mathematics. Obviously, India has not made enough efforts in this regard, and if this issue is not fully taken seriously, India may miss the opportunity further.
The main function of artificial intelligence is to use algorithmic decision-making to replace human decision-making. So far, India has been in the leading position in imparting knowledge services, and I believe it will be able to catch up with the global demand for artificial intelligence. "A lot of the money in India is allocated to low-level areas in other industries, especially in agriculture. But the output ratio of this investment is obviously not comparable to that of investing in technology. We must now focus on cultivating our engineering and technical personnel so that they can focus on high-value production technologies."
and even India's largest e-commerce company Flipkarthrtml4 are also working to enrich India's talent pool to drive innovation. Mayur Data, chief data scientist at Flipkart, said, “Industry must work with the higher education academia that provides first-class courses to create a large number of opportunities to attract the next generation of AI professionals. We need closer collaboration between industries and colleges and institutes so that problem-solving capabilities are not limited to a small number of people working in the enterprise sector.”
He added that India needs an industrial ecosystem that produces high-tech products and should focus more on research and innovation. This will not only strengthen India's AI talent reserves, but also help us to take the lead in cutting-edge AI work.
However, Flipkart also acknowledges that although Flipkart is India's most innovative product company and one of India's top brands, which also has about 100 million or more Indian user data and computing resources, it is difficult for them to hire excellent engineers from AI.
The power of digital services is revealed
Nishith said: "We need to continue to evolve to maintain a leading position in the global artificial intelligence revolution, otherwise we may lose our advantage."
Artificial intelligence is to some extent machine learning, and software can be written to recognize patterns and replace repetitive work in artificiality. The second is deep learning, where the software obtains data from voice, vision (camera), and text to identify patterns and learns prediction results or specify solutions. But real AI still has a long way to go where machines disrupt human decisions. However, look at the changes in your life now and you will know how fast the development of artificial intelligence is.
Try your Google assistant and ask it a few questions. Say, "Hey, Google , you are my best friend," and the friendly woman's voice will reply, "It's great, because you are my best friend, too." The voice can also show the other person's emotions when he answers.Then you can hear Google Assistant say, “I’m pretty sure that means we can tell each other secrets now.
This is the beginning of AI, and it’s based on big data. Companies and governments around the world are driving the rapid development of this technology, and perhaps one day in the future AI will permanently replace some of human work. This trend has now affected 700,000 engineers at four top IT services companies in India. Jobs like the test process in software specifications will likely give way to smart software to run these tests on their own in less than five years. The demand for large teams in
will disappear, and a stronger team will be needed to add value to the enterprise. “People need to have a system-level approach when building software, which means they have to have more industry knowledge or strong programming skills.” ”
You just need to look at the future development trends of Amazon retail stores (Amazon Go) to see the power of artificial intelligence and related retail processes. Future retail stores no longer need people to serve customers, or even people to receive payments. “There will be a lot of room for development in the software field in the future, and engineers must understand tools that can help them improve their data and build applications a lot.” ”
India’s IT services industry is about $180 billion in size, and now is the best time to train a complete set of students to think independently and meet new challenges. Indian IT services companies need to rethink their original business models to better serve the service market. If you look at the quarterly earnings of Wipro and Infosys, you will know that 25% of their business revenue is currently coming from digital services.
focuses on cultivating math talents
Sasken Technologies Digital Transformation Services AVP Digital Platform said, “Companies and universities in India must evaluate the amazing gap between the demand and supply of AI engineers. "
He added that most of the engineering R&D expenditures of Sasken customers are in the areas of IoT, predictive maintenance and robotic process automation. The success of all these projects depends largely on the application of AI in building analytical models. India has lost its competitive advantage in offshoring in Eastern Europe and its English advantage over China. If it is not yet actively responded, the gap that will only be wider and wider.
should take a multi-pronged approach to bridge the gap:
introduces the concept of artificial intelligence and management language at the university stage, or collaborates with the industry to create vocational courses and scholarships.
The online learning or e-learning market is booming in India. This could be a very important channel to bridge this gap. These projects can provide specialized training programs for people with varying degrees of exposure to AI to gain expertise in their spare time off work.
internal HR and learning departments should motivate employees to participate in AI course training when they are outside of work.
Karnataka recently partnered with Nasscom, Intel and IBM to establish a R&D center in the field of AI to develop AI solutions being built. "The government is going to build such a platform, but industry and academia must unite to create value. Artificial intelligence can process data faster, benefiting governments and people.
Unfortunately, the root cause of the development problems in the field of artificial intelligence in India is the lack of mathematical talents. Madhusudan K M, chief technology officer of
Mindtree Ltd, said, "Before recruiting programmers, we usually look at the math skills of graduates. If they graduate from mathematics, it is easy to train them in AI, etc. Mathematics allows people to create data models, and engineers can build AI systems on this basis.
AI allows engineers to take over and build services based on today's services such as applications and data analysis. AWS, Microsoft and Google provide tools that enable engineers to improve data a lot and focus on building services."mindtree has also set up a team of 60 seniors to build solutions around artificial intelligence, blockchain and the Internet of Things. “These veterans are part of the global team, who understand how to conceptualize new-age solutions around technologies such as AI,” said Richard Lobo, EVP and HR manager of
Infosys Limited. “New opportunities are emerging in areas such as user experience, cloud-native development, artificial intelligence and industrial IoT, big data, analytics and automation. In this environment, it is important that employees demonstrate excellent learning ability and the ability to quickly master new skills.”
Infosys has begun to change over the past three years. They began to keep employees informed of the latest technology trends in order to update and improve themselves. They completed AI technology training for 3,000 people last year, and 2,100 people completed training on the Nia platform, and have established a digital education system with video. There are currently more than 3,500 training videos available, and more than 100,000 infoscion users can already use it. They also work with Udacity and Coursera to bring unique other types of skills training.
Artificial intelligence has come the future
According to a PwC/Assocham report, India's policies on the application of artificial intelligence have so far lagged behind the demand for artificial intelligence by startups that have long been seamlessly integrated into the services they provide to their customers. If we look at the applications we are using now (e-commerce platforms, chat services, social media services, etc.), they are all using AI in some form and in some maturity.
Despite India's rapid advances in technology, neither companies nor researchers have made full use of AI. The United States is currently enacting laws on driverless cars, but India has not kept up in this regard. The report also added that India can actually become a leader in the industry by establishing a legal basis in advance, rather than waiting for the technology to reach the level of regulatory intervention before starting the law.
South Korea has announced a $840 million fund for artificial intelligence projects. In the United States, AI-related projects are part of commercial and military interests. "Artificial intelligence is just hype," Infosys founder Narayana Murthy said in a press conference.
But in Silicon Valley, AWS CEO Andy Jassy and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison are clearly building machine learning algorithms that disrupt IT and data science. Andy Jassy said, "There are many people who say that artificial intelligence will take away jobs. But we believe that it will create more jobs. Artificial intelligence will replace most of the repetitive work of human beings, which will open another door to the development of human society."
Artificial intelligence is not about replacing people, but about using software algorithms to replace people with repetitive work. So, what will humans do next? Some people can program and maintain these AI applications, which accounts for about 10% of the engineering ecosystem. What about the rest of
? In India, where 1 million engineering students pass the exam every year, they have to ask themselves this question, while more than 1,000 engineering institutes must answer questions about employment capacity among parents who send their children to college.
Original title: Artificial intelligence is coming, is India ready?
Source: February 1, 2018 Xiaoluo No.
Author: Liu Yu
