World AI Day: a Brief Rundown of our Favorite Technology and How It's Shaping Indian Industries This July 16, let's take a peak into the past and present to see how AI has changed the industries across the world

Every year, July 16 is celebrated as the 'World AI Day', where we recognize the field of artificial intelligence and the all path-breaking innovations that have taken place courtesy of it. But, for all the obvious reasons, this year will be a special one. This July 16 will be celebrated knowing that AI is a part of almost every individual's daily life and not just limited to industrial and scientific use.

First introduced by British Mathematician Alan Turing in the 1950s, AI has come a long way since then and has now boomed courtesy of OpenAI's ChatGPT and the subsequent tools and use cases. Turing proposed the Turing Test, an imitation game to determine whether a computer possessed the capabilities to think or mimic a human.

Quickly following it up was the Dartmouth Workshop of 1956. The summer workshop is largely accepted as the birthplace of AI as a field of study and lasted for six to eight weeks with 10+ mathematicians and scientists participating in it. "The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer," stated the proposal.

The era of the 1960s was an enthusiastic one with a rise of funding in the field. General Motors, an American multinational automotive manufacturing company, saw the first industrial robot work in its assembly line at the Inland Fisher Guide Plant in New Jersey in 1961. ELIZA, an early natural language processing computer program, was developed by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT in 1964.

However, it was followed up with 'AI Winter', with two major periods being 1974–1980 and 1987–1993. This was due to hype, institutional factors, economic factors, insufficient computing capability, and failure to adapt. But the period saw a few integral experiments being conducted in the field, with Mercedes-Benz testing driverless cars in 1986 and IBM's Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, becoming the first computer to win a game, and the first to win a match, against the then-reigning world champion Garry Kasparov under regular time controls in 1997.

Internet and machine learning revived the space in later years, and the 2010s was when we saw a mainstream adoption of AI. Major tech giants steered towards AI and actively began working towards harnessing it. 2008 saw the birth of Siri, Apple's virtual assistant, with Amazon's Alexa following in 2014. Google's AlphaGo, a board game playing computer program, competed and defeated Chinese Go player Fan Hui in 2015 while 2016 saw the first robot citizen- Sophia. And last but not the least, the ChatGPT of 2023 which saw users interact with a chatbot which could mimic human response and strike a conversation. A 360 degree indeed!

It takes two to tango: How AI adoption has changed the trajectory of various industries

From start-ups (big or small) to top companies (irrespective of industry), everyone is investing big in AI. With Elon Musk (also an early investor in OpenAI) recently announcing his new venture xAI and Wipro announcing its decision to invest USD 1 billion in AI over the next three years, it's safe to say one will hear news pertaining to AI almost on alternate days.

According to Tracxn, a market research firm, funding of USD 653.9M was made in the Indian AI space in the last six months. It's three times the amount invested in FY-2014 and surpassed the amount of USD 450.2M invested in 2017. NASSCOM, in its report, shared that over 60 Indian generative AI start-ups were offering their services across various industries.

Let's take a look at how AI has disrupted industries and sectors for good-

Health- By harnessing AI in the field, the medical and diagnosis process can be fast-tracked. The technology is being used in the segments such as early Illness detection, drug development trials, precise patient monitoring, telehealth platforms, remote monitoring, healthcare analytics, and virtual assistants. "The powerful trinity of AI, Start-up India, and Government Policies is leading the mission of Digital India in the healthcare sector. AI provides the technological backbone and analytical capabilities to process vast amounts of healthcare data, derive insights, and enable predictive and personalized healthcare," shares Rishi Shah, Product Head, Dozee. He further feels that AI has the capabilities to bridge the healthcare divide, providing affordable and accessible care to a vast population.

Telangana-based Salcit Technologies in March this year launched Swaasa, an AI platform which is said to detect tuberculosis within a few minutes. Other AI-leveraging funded health start-ups include Wysa, Qure.ai, Niramai, Cureskin, Tricog, SigTuple, Synapsica, and Deeptek.

Drone- This sector came into the limelight within the last three-four years and has quickly adopted AI to emerge as a powerful combination. Drone start-ups offer their services to clients and customers across various industries. "AI has greatly enhanced the capabilities of drone technology, including tracking and performance. Drones can now navigate autonomously, detect and track objects, and analyze data. AI has truly revolutionized the drone industry, and Garuda Aerospace has witnessed firsthand the remarkable improvements in drone tracking and capabilities. The drones developed by Garuda Aerospace integrate AI technology, leveraging advanced computer vision systems that rely on cameras and sensors. These advancements assist farmers, businesses, experts and government officials in making well-informed decisions to preserve ecological equilibrium," shared Agnishwar Jayaprakash, Founder and CEO, Garuda Aerospace.

Drones have become an integral part of logistics, construction, agriculture, industrial inspection, and bathymetry. "The system of AI-powered drones can analyze data from sensors like cameras and lidar and identify objects and terrain features so that it can make informed decisions and eventually navigate, avoid obstacles, and finally accomplish the mission. The AI-powered drone can fly for a longer time and complete all the tasks with the highest level of accuracy," shared Rana Rajvinder Singh, Founder and COO, Scandron and Director, HelixSense, in his LinkedIn post. IPO-raised ideaForge uses AI-powered drones for precision agriculture, "The farmers can leverage drone-enabled intelligence to experiment with different seeds-fertilizer combinations. They can plant one variation in one section while planting another variation in a different section," according to the official website.

Education- It is safe to say that education has emerged as one of the front runners for adopting AI at a fast pace. Personalized student experience and student support systems are one of the top ways how Indian edtech startups are utilizing AI, other methods being adaptive assessments, content creation and curation, intelligent grading and feedback, language learning and translation. "At Physics Wallah, we believe that AI is more than just technology; it is a transformative force in education. Our AI-powered 'Ask Doubt' chatbot has revolutionized student queries, providing prompt and accurate solutions. With its vast database and generative technology, the chatbot offers comprehensive support, reducing turnaround time and enhancing operational efficiency. This empowers our educators to focus on delivering exceptional learning experiences. Through AI, we have improved student queries, making their learning journey more efficient and rewarding," shared Devesh Mishra, Chief Technology Officer, Physics Wallah.

ZuAI, an AI-powered student tutoring application, is offering personalized and effective learning solutions to Indian students from classes IV to XII across all streams and subjects. They have developed three chatbots- Exam Bot, Revision Bot, and Class Bot which offers topic quizzes, explanation of key points, and allow note taking from specific chapters, respectively. In March, Khan Academy launched Khanmigo, a GPT-4-powered virtual tutor and learning guide for its students, while earlier last month, BYJU'S announced WIZ, a suite of three AI transformer models- BADRI, MathGPT, and TeacherGPT.

Fintech- AI in FinTech global market size grew from USD 9.15 million in 2022 to USD 11.59 million in 2023 and is estimated to grow to $31.71 billion in 2027. Some of the benefits of AI adoption in the industry include Personalization of Services, Automation of Complex Tasks, Fraud Detection and Prevention, and Risk Assessment.

"The success of using AI in terms of our lending platform and loan disbursement is measured by the impact we create in improving financial inclusion, increasing geographical reach, bringing in efficiencies, and keeping our NPAs in control. Through the power of AI, Revfin makes loans accessible to all and across the country by leveraging non-traditional data and techniques like Biometrics, Psychometrics, and Gamification," said Sameer Aggarwal, CEO and founder, Revfin on how the startup measures the success of using AI in its operations.

"At HaiVE we've had a front row seat to see how AI has enabled real-time, personalized financial advice, transformed risk assessment with predictive models, and augmented fraud detection through pattern recognition, increasing security exponentially. The use of robo-advisors has democratised access to financial services. The rise of chatbots and voice assistants has improved customer experiences, offering 24/7 support. Algorithmic trading has enhanced market efficiency, and smart contracts are increasing transaction speed and reducing costs," shares Deepika Loganathan, Co-Founder and CEO, Haive.

HR- The Human Resource landscape has forever been an integral part of any company, irrespective of industry or size. By leveraging AI, HR startups are simplifying processes such Recruitment and Talent Acquisition, Candidate Sourcing and Job Matching, Employee Onboarding, Employee Engagement and Feedback, and Employee Retention and Attrition Prediction. "From screening resumes, job descriptions, test sheets and other documents to picking the best candidates, AI-powered recruitment tools prove to be effective and efficient. They can be used to search and match job seekers with relevant vacancies based on predefined criteria and also predict how the job performance will turn out based on the attributes of the team they will be a part of. Therefore, AI can help recruiters develop a more efficient, unbiased, meritocratic and streamlined hiring process by alleviating the time spent on mundane operations," said Aditya Malik, Founder and CEO, Valuematrix.ai and a Nasscom and CII Mentor.

Art and Entertainment- AI is being used in areas such as content creation, post-production, and marketing when it comes to film and television. Recently, Netflix unveiled its green screen filming method using magenta lights. The AI-powered technology will allow the inserting of actors in the foreground of digital or prerecorded scenes, reducing the post-production cost and time. We can say that the technology is still in its development stage and has its limitations, but certainly not for long.

Back in May, NVIDIA announced its AI-powered Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for video games. Simply put, the technology will bring non-playable characters in a video game to life where your character will interact with them. Additionally, the technology will allow recognizing your voice, facial expressions, and hand gestures and will offer text-to-speech and natural language understanding capabilities. "This is the future of video gaming," noted Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, NVIDIA.