Catapult into an AI-driven future with profound insights from industry experts

As the world leaps towards a smarter future propelled by unprecedented advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), let's take a moment to revel in this revolutionary technology's remarkable impact and potential.

People observe Artificial Intelligence Appreciation Day every year on July 16 to commemorate the strides of AI that help humanity. It is also a day to reflect on the significant aspect of AI ethics and to foster meaningful conversations surrounding the intersection of AI and ethics.

Artificial Intelligence is transforming every aspect of our lives, and its ubiquity in all fields, be it education, medicine, entertainment, etc, corroborates its potential to enhance human life. To best understand how this breakthrough technology is transforming our current systems and its potential to transform our future, it is imperative to listen to those spearheading AI innovation and adoption in their respective fields.

Thus, to bring voices through the corridors of different sectors, we delved into the minds of industry leaders at the forefront of AI adoption. Their invaluable perspectives shed light on the transformative power of AI and its implications for our future.

The Impact of AI Across Various Domains

Puneet Gupta, Vice President, and Managing Director at NetApp India/SAARC, says, "The technology has progressed tremendously in the last year, with many more promises and growth opportunities on the horizon. NetApp's recent Cloud Complexity Report, for instance, found that 56% of Asia Pacific tech executives expect half or more of their cloud deployments to be supported by AI-driven applications by 2030."

Speaking about the key fields where AI is making a major dent, Puneet asserts, "There are three broad areas where we see AI making a big contribution; Driving intelligence at the edge, increasing performance at the core, and accelerating analysis in the cloud."

"To unleash the full potential of AI, it will be essential for organisations to build a data pipeline or fabric that spans across on-premises, hosted data centre and hyperscaler

cloud, with real time visibility and manageability. This will let organisations harness all available information in real time and ultimately, maximise business impact," he further adds. 

AI Picking-Up in India

Artificial Intelligence adoption has been on the rise in India with several government initiatives, research advancements by premier institutes, entrepreneurial initiatives, and a growing pool of AI talent.

"The adoption rate of AI in India has been growing consistently, especially in sectors like healthcare, retail, BFSI, manufacturing, and e-commerce. The Dell Technologies 2023 Innovation Index report stated that 59% of Indian businesses are currently investing or exploring the feasibility of investing in AI, Machine Learning and advanced analytics to advance innovation for their growth. AI has been simplifying crucial business processes and helping enterprises boost their analytics, strengthen the value chain, and make business processes cost-effective while improving customer experience. For any business with a digital-first approach, AI has become a key component of their growth roadmap. This underlines the need for developing a sound AI strategy—moving from AI-possible to AI-proven—encompassing technology, people, and processes. With automation and security, AI has the capability to accelerate digital transformation enabling faster time-to-market, improved customer experiences, and an unmatched efficiency," said Mr. Manish Gupta, Vice President, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell Technologies India.

"The successful adoption of AI requires a robust IT infrastructure, network architecture, and data framework which can support the development and deployment of AI models at scale. AI automation and operation platforms will solve business problems and run projects from conception to production. According to the Dell Technologies 2023 Innovation Index report, 62% of organizations plan to increase spending on AI, including people, processes, and technology. By overcoming challenges and following best practices such as identifying objectives, choosing the right AI tools, and analysing the performance, organizations can develop an AI strategy that delivers real business value while mitigating risks and ensuring ethical use of the technology. With the emergence of Generative AI, new business opportunities will be open for exploration to help with higher-level of decision-making. This will allow us to effectively reach more customers, and provide better outcomes at the workplace, along with a profound potential to automate complex processes, improve customer interactions and unlock new possibilities with better machine intelligence," Mr. Gupta adds.

Strategies For Embracing AI

While steering towards AI adoption, working with a framework that enhances its adoption and integration and empowers all stakeholders is crucial.

Speaking about the importance of planning when jumping on the AI bandwagon, Suresh Sambandam, CEO, Kissflow, explains, "As organizations embark on artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives, they need to plan for two parallel tracks. I call the first track the tactical track, where organizations need to immediately become consumers of AI services for their internal use while also providing AI-based interfaces to external touch points like customers, suppliers and partners. This needs to be done in the next 2-3 quarters. The second track is a strategic track, which fundamentally rethinks what an "AI FIRST" paradigm would look like if an organization is re-built from scratch. As we celebrate AI Appreciation Day, I hope organizations make plans for both these tracks to excel in the new AI era."

The Growing Popularity of AI

Artificial intelligence's popularity is increasing each day as it permeates and revolutionizes various sectors. Talking about how AI has been instrumental in ensuring safe payments, Nitendra Rajput, Vice President and Head of AI Garage Center in India at Mastercard, says, "Artificial Intelligence (AI) is central to the work being done at Mastercard, and critical to our products and services. We've been using AI for more than a decade, to make payments safer and more secure, as well as to enhance processes, operations and functions within the organization. AI allows us to protect billions of transactions we switch on our network every year, at speed and scale. Our solutions such as Decision Intelligence, Safety Net, etc. use AI to flag, prevent and even pre-empt fraudulent transactions. Globally, our AI-powered security tools have saved more than $35 billion being lost to cybercriminals in the past three years alone."

"AI is not just about data and algorithms but also about people. Our people play an equally important part in deciding how to act on new information and patterns as they arise, while adjusting the system to maintain the quality of the AI inputs and outputs. Bringing people along to make sure they understand and embrace the technology is critical. The key to this is to create an environment that fosters continuous learning and development. In fact, AI can help enhance learning – a case in point is Mastercard's AI-powered learning platform called Unlocked, that helps us to open up the boundaries of our teams, expand our talent reach – to ultimately grow and develop with each other," Mr. Rajput concludes.