Artificial Intelligence Can Be a Big Disrupter for India

Recently, former Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka announced a new Artificial Intelligence-driven startup, named Vianai Systems, with US$50 million funds. According to him, India has the potential to become a world leader in artificial intelligence so for that, it has to be integrated into the country's education system massively.

"India is at an inflection point when it comes to AI or artificial intelligence. Over the next 20-25 years, AI is going to be a very, very big disruptor for the Indian society because what one is seeing now in terms of automation and job losses because of automation is just the beginning," said Vishal.

To become the world's leader in artificial intelligence, in AI skill, and AI talent, the country needs to bring AI education and ability to build AI systems at a very large scale. In August this year, at the request of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vishal gave a presentation before the NITI Aayog how to expand the reach of AI to the Indian society in a very big way. During the presentation, he said this required creating the necessary infrastructure to bring talent through institutions, schools, and educational institutions, the ability to do AI education in a massive way.

Vishal further stated that the Prime Minister said he personally saw whenever classes worked into digital classrooms, children would sometimes even forget to eat their lunch because they were so engrossed in learning. It was very encouraging but a lot of that has to be done, he said and suggested a multi-faceted countrywide programme like digital classrooms.

Talent Deficiency in AI

According to Vishal, there have been remarkable achievements in the field of AI but acknowledged that significant issues too have emerged in the space. The technique themselves are quite opaque, not transparent. The lack of ability to explain is one of the major weaknesses of these techniques. Furthermore, there is an incredible shortage of talent in the field of AI.

Taking this backdrop in his mind, Vishal started this venture to create a platform that can radically enhance the accessibility of AI, that is educational, and explains to people how this works, so they can experiment with it, play with it, explore and understand what is happening.

Vianai Systems is an AI Enterprise Platform that he demonstrated the first glimpse of it at the Oracle Open World event in the Silicon Valley last week. The newly established startup is designed to assist businesses across the world to successfully leverage artificial intelligence that will assist drive fundamental digital transformations. Vishal has clinched US$50 million as the startup seed money, with saying that "Hopefully, we wouldn't have to raise any money again. The objective is to bring AI to businesses on a massive scale."