RAISE 2020 marked the beginning of a new era in AI for India – a mega AI event of this scale with 48 sessions, 320+ speakers from 21 countries and over 79,000 registered users – all converged to deliberate the path for India’s AI ambitions.

At the closing ceremony was N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons who noted that the extent and success of an event truly signified the arrival of India as an AI hub. Over the years, emerging technologies like AI, ML, IoT achieved significant maturity, but now the time is ripe to process data at scale. He remarked that India is in the midst of a huge transformation – from an information society to an insights-driven society – and this shift has been powered by AI and analytics. India can be an AI leader, if the country can invest and enhance its single biggest endowment – talent.

By using AI, one can solve the access challenge in areas like healthcare and education, as well as make meaningful products and create jobs, said Chandrasekaran. Moreover, this wave of transformation is not exclusively for the benefit of software engineers and data scientists, but for farmers, teachers, shopkeepers and other blue collar employees. This can be achieved by investing in deeptech, and making India an R&D hub. Moreover, it is imperative to reimagine AI applications and envision a future channeled by platform economics. For this, policy frameworks need to support tech developments with a focus on responsible AI.

India has on the right path, believes Chandrasekaran, and it is imperative to keep the momentum up. 

Other speakers at the closing session included Vala Afshar, Chief Data Scientist, Salesforce; Murat Sonmez, MD of the World Economic Forum, Dr Isa Ali Abrahim, Hon'ble Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Nigeria, Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, MeitY, Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog and Abhishek Singh, CEO and President, NeGD and CEO, MyGov.