AI making breakthroughs in Indian banking and healthcare

India is still lagging way behind America and Russia when it comes to Artificial Intelligence R&D, but it is still helping many sectors incrementally, explains Asoke K. Laha, President & CEO, Interra Information Technologies Inc.

Is AI gaining traction in the Indian market in 2019? What are the examples of the businesses that are implementing AI-ML?

Undoubtedly, AI, ML and IoT are gaining ground in India in a relative sense. It is often said India is the third largest country where these cutting edge technologies have been put to use, the first two being US and China. But we are far behind both countries in these segments, being a late comer. The real battle for supremacy is being fought between US and China and the rest are peripheral players. My sense is that countries like South Korea, Finland, Sweden, Russia etc are ahead of India in the R&D and incubation in AI-ML and IoT.

There will be significant progress in these technologies in 2019 and beyond since almost all top Indian companies are drawing up plans for implementing these technologies. The sectors that are attracting digitalization/automation are retail banking, healthcare, IT, infrastructure, education, healthcare and the list is expanding. Let me point out a few examples.

A lot of banks have already adopted AI-based systems to provide customer support, detect anomalies and credit card frauds. An example is HDFC Bank. It has developed an AI-based chatbot called EVA (Electronic Virtual Assistant), built by Bengaluru-based Senseforth AI Research. Eva has addressed over 3 million customer queries, interacted with over half a million unique users, and held over a million conversations. Eva can collect knowledge from thousands of sources and provide simple answers in less than 0.4 seconds. It is also used for fraud prevention.

Recently, Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports run by private players have announced that they would have face recognition equipment run on AI for making the check-in hassle free. The Airport Authority of India (AAI) has also said that it will introduce this system in all airports as a part of the Digiseva in a short period of time.

What are the AI trends in both India and worldwide? Where is India lagging when it comes to the rest of the world?

I feel AI and related technologies are incrementally impacting sectors like marketing, banking, finance, agriculture, healthcare, gaming, space exploration, driverless cars, and chatbots.

Looking at the healthcare sector, there are many examples of AI use. Cambio Health Care developed a clinical decision support system for stroke prevention that can give the physician a warning when there’s a patient at risk of having a heart stroke. Another such example is Coala Life, which is a company that has a digitalized device that can find cardiac diseases. Similarly, Aifloo is developing a system for keeping track of how people are doing in nursing homes, home care, etc.

Space expeditions and discoveries always require data mining. AI-ML are the best way to handle and process data on this scale. Astronomers are using AI to sift through years of data obtained by the Kepler telescope in order to identify a distant eight-planet solar system. Tesla will have “robotaxi” version – one that can ferry passengers without anyone behind the wheel – ready for the streets next year.

Yet, the point to be noted is that India is lagging behind in the fundamental research in these technologies. Also, I feel in the Indian situation it should be put to use more widely and intensely in sectors like cleaning of sewerages, rivers, oceans and other water bodies, or for ensuring better security checks at airports and public transport systems.

Will AI see a fillip in 2020 and what about the entire 2020s?

According to Gartner, 2020 will be a year which will be important for the development of business related to AI. This is because computerized reasoning will become a positive spark of work. With the arrival of 2020, job creation related to AI will cross into positive territory, reaching two million new jobs in 2025.

Are there any dangers of AI? Can it get out of control?

AI presents potential threats to humanity. Experts are divided on this issue. A section feels that technology development is unstoppable and in its wake it will bring protective mechanisms for the mankind. An example is nuclear science. There are productive and destructive uses for the nuclear energy. Science will reinvent systems that can check mankind from misusing its powers. This does not mean future R&D on nuclear science should stop. That said, the main threat perceptions of the AI are unemployment, threat to privacy, development of autonomous weapons made of robots, complexity created by proliferation of machines controlling and supporting each other. It may lead to dictatorial regime similar to what George Orwell described in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. But that should not be a full stop to widen our horizons in the AI, which I believe has more good than bad.

Why and how has IoT entered into the business ecosystem of India, with reference to both consumer and industrial IoT as part of Industry 4.0.

There has been a drastic change in the Indian business ecosystem due to the integration of IoT. IoT has hugely transformed the dynamics of various industries. According to NASSCOM, the IoT market is expected to reach US$ 15 billion by 2020, accounting nearly 5% of the total global market.

IoT, for both the industrial and the consumer segment, requires technology integration as well as establishing new business models. IoT helps in maintaining quality across the entire ecosystem by almost real-time triggers ensuring a great customer experience every time. IoT has the potential to drastically reduce business costs and enabling new revenue streams.

There is a lot of scope and unexplored opportunities for IoT providers to develop compelling IoT solutions that can explore how the ability to collect and analyze disparate data in real-time. Developments with regards to IoT will play out within and across enterprises. This offers opportunities for sustained value creation and even disruption.