Technology is like a potter’s wet clay that can be expertly moulded into a ‘vessel’ by human-centred experiences, for sustained and responsible use. In these challenging times, technology has been the glue bringing together people with trust, positivity, compassion, and purpose. Organizations have been leveraging technology to reinforce trust amidst uncertainties with safe and secure tech-enabled solutions such as telemedicine, digital payments, blockchain-enabled supply chains, and digital models such as cloud kitchens that allow customers to see and analyse how products are being made in real-time.

Technology became a catalyst for social inclusion for people across the global boundaries, granting everyone acceptance, as we aimed to remain connected even while being distant. Serving society, technology helped speed up innovation in the country, ensuring sustainable growth, employment, and resource efficiency. It would be right to say that we exist, but with technology, we co-exist!

Over the years, technology has played a significant role in bringing the world closer together and has created a boundaryless, united work ecosystem for us to progress in. We, at Tech Mahindra have always believed that we can do little alone but together we can do so much more, and technology is the glue that brings all stakeholders together to co-create and co-innovate!

An Era of Artificial Intelligence is on the Horizon

AI is all-pervasive. Infused into every aspect of any business, it can transform business models and the processes that define them. It can also transform the applications that deliver them, and the infrastructure that supports them.

We are moving towards a human-centred partnership model between AI and people to enhance cognitive performance. This includes learning, decision making, and delivering new experiences. As a company, we plan to prepare our customers for this emerging era of Augmented Intelligence (AI). To harness its full potential, we recently set up a think tank for Artificial Intelligence, which will work with academia, businesses, independent bodies, and the government to figure out how we can “apply” human and machine intelligence to boost innovation and transform India.

With the holistic AI approach, we can enable enterprises to Re-design, Re-imagine, Re-invent themselves and deliver enhanced experiences to their customers. We have many success stories that firmly establish the test case for AI. For instance, for an insurance claims company, AI improved data accuracy by 90% and reduced 60% human effort. AI legal assistant peruses legal docs to reduce turnaround from days to mere seconds with accuracy. We can witness many such examples across industry verticals that are set to truly revolutionize the scope & expanse of AI.

Transcending Boundaries for the Greater Good

It is time to leverage this current technology revolution to reduce gaps that hold back truly inclusive and sustainable development – and this cannot be done in silos! Industry-Academia-Government collaboration is the need of the hour, along with the right kind of policies supporting science, technology and innovation that will encourage development across all sectors.

AI has the potential to deliver additional global economic activity of around $13 trillion by 2030, or about 16 percent higher cumulative GDP compared with today. This amounts to 1.2 percent additional GDP growth per year. If delivered, this impact would compare well with that of other general-purpose technologies through history.

Undoubtedly, AI is already shaping global competitiveness, promising strategic advantage to early adopters. For instance, the Government of India has already embarked on an AI technology revolution. With a few more policies strengthening the governance of its deployment, India will seamlessly harness its enormous digital capital through AI-driven development. Similarly, the UAE Government is working towards accelerating the pace of AI adoption through strategic partnerships with both the public and private sectors.

I resonate with the statement of Philip Sauerbaum, Policy Officer for Digitalization at the European Commission, “A multistakeholder approach is necessary because it leads to equality in the AI ecosystem where data flows are protected.” I have always believed in the potential of technology to help solve the biggest challenges and harness the biggest opportunities.

With AI as electricity, comes data as fuel. It is important to understand that the AI we have been using and enthralled with are still stochastic parrots. They still do not understand what they say or do. It’s guided by human emotion and imagination. We have all witnessed the biases and non-responsibility AI can produce based on the data fed. We now need more approaches and research to pursue ethical and responsible AI. At the same time, governments need data policies for sharing data across borders. What may be ethical for me in India may not be true for you sitting in Abu Dhabi.

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