AI Pe Charcha is a series of panel discussions for in-depth and informative knowledge sharing on artificial intelligence by various industry stalwarts, leaders, and researchers. This endeavour follows the roaring success of RAISE 2020 to continue the discussions started during the international summit. The sessions have been hosted by Mr Abhishek Singh, CEO & President, National e-Governance Division, and MD & CEO, Digital India Corporation. Here's a roundup of some insightful ideas that that have been highlighted in the five sessions held so far.

• Infusing AI Into citizen centric services: The first ever session was moderated by Dr. Rohini Srivathsa, NTO Microsoft India, who is responsible for driving innovation and growth through the tech industry for the last 25 years. The keynote speaker for the panel discussion, M. Rob Elsinga, NTO Microsoft The Netherlands, gave a European perspective towards the usage of AI and mentioned a report that Microsoft created along with Ernst & Young, which surveyed 213 public sector companies. Ms. Shaily Goel, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft India, talked extensively about the application areas for citizens across sectors in India. Read more...
• Open source AI to solve billion-scale problems: Mr. Vivek Raghavan, Chief Product Manager and Biometric Architect at UIDAI mentioned that there are high prospects that a citizen may enjoy most of the required services right on their smartphones. He also elaborated on the scope and progress in face detection in India. There was detailed demonstration of the Aadhar attendance application. An interesting project that grabbed the interest of the audience was the “Fingerprint Liveness Detection.” This robust AI model developed by UIDAI is tuned to differentiate between live and non-live fingerprints (non-live materials such as Fevicol or silicon and more) to prevent misuse. Read more...
• AI in Smart Cities: This session focussed on the role of AI in establishing smart cities. The co-host Dr. Rohini Srivathsa, National Technology Officer Microsoft India stated that while we focus on rural development, the need to understand urbanisation is also equally important. The key takeaway was that for a smooth and successful AI utilisation in smart cities, we shall remember that human centricity is at the core of the idea, and we need a cross-agency collaboration and focus on the use cases. When it comes to smart cities, top-priority use cases for AI and IoT deployments are public safety, environment, infrastructure, and transportation. Read more...
• State of AI in India and the world and its adoption in the Public Sector: The session included many AI experts from Google, among some other experts from the public policy domain. Innovative ideas such as AI for proactive healthcare and the concept of 'cohorting' were discussed, all of which are highly relevant in these critical COVID-19 stricken times. A panelist beautifully explained AI as the “science of making things smart.”  They explained the technology behind Google Assistant which understands 9 Indian languages with 20+ million daily users. The session also touched upon BERT (a natural network-based technique for NLP pre-training), which powered the largest leap ahead for Google Search in 5+ years. The session also had insights around investment by Google in India around AI. The esteemed panelists presented their thoughts on how public sector organisations can adopt and implement ML responsibly. Read more...
• Implementing trustworthy AI solutions: This insightful edition had the AI team from Infosys which demonstrated various in-progress projects in line with more AI involvement in various industries and segments. They proposed that using AI in education will make learning more relevant, convenient, fun, and engaging. Infosys is also working on the project of Applied AI@GSTIN, where AI algorithms will help find ticket clusters and bots automate resolution and achieved zero-touch for 25% tickets. AI-driven insights will help in the detection of tax evasion, revenue assurance, value-added services for taxpayers and will provide statistical insights to policymakers. Read more...

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