Cypher 2019 is in its fifth edition now and is slated to be held from 18-20 September at Hotel Radisson Blu, Bengaluru. It serves as one of the biggest platforms to network and learn from the leading thought leaders, companies and startups in Analytics, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence discipline. The conference has many interesting talks and sessions across the three days from industry thought leaders, who have interesting takes on how the industry has evolved. Cypher 2018 had many interesting talks from the exceptional speakers. This article lists down 10 best quotes from Cypher 2018.
“The last big renaissance in our way of living was the industrial revolution. Now we are on a cusp of a more profound change brought to us by the technology that we are creating such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, bioengineering and so on. It is not only going to change the world of business and commerce but more importantly, it is going to implode our existing code of ethics. Our interaction with machines is changing us socially, emotionally and culturally. We always want to humanize the product that we invent. Is AI adapting to a sexual theme? I would like to think so.”
–Atul Jalan, CEO & MD, Manthan
“Models and architectures today are a lot more inclusive. If I had to measure the effectiveness of my policy five years back, I would say let us have a detailed form where I would take feedback and compare individual data points, which was time taking as a human. But models today have made it easier to solve. It can now analyse many parameters in one go such as reviews and ratings, social media images, categorical attributes, numeric attributes and more.”
–Dakshinamuthry V Kolluru, Founder & President, INSOFE
“Looking at the entire nexus of forces and what is around us, it seems evident that India is at the forefront of AI. We have one of the largest talent bases, a good number of AI professionals, massive evolution in the startup ecosystem, a growing hub for entrepreneurship, and more. But we are still winning a bronze or silver in the AI race. We are still away from the gold and we have to still overcome hurdles such as data quality, channelising decision making and more to become a leader in the space.”
–Deep Thomas, Group Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Aditya Birla Management Corporation
“Healthcare is a big industry but unfortunately, when it comes to technological innovations, very fewer innovations in terms of digital health has happened. I believe that in the next five years, smart software will make smarter diagnosis than doctors. In 10 years it will become legally mandatory for us to take the second opinion from the software before starting the treatment. I am confident because as doctors when we make a diagnosis, everything is finite, there is nothing infinite.”
–Devi Shetty, Chairman & Executive Director, Narayana Health
“The talk of AI is everywhere and it is natural that organisations want to adopt AI in some form and explore what it can do for them. But businesses equally face another dilemma whether AI is nothing but analytics repackaged in a different form using different jargons and terms. It is often said that AI, machine learning, deep learning are essentially the same thing that has been done in the last 15 years under analytics. There is a lot of hype around AI which needs to settle.”
–Joydeep Dam, Director- Algorithms and AI, Bridgei2i
“There are many myths around AI that need to be busted. The first myth is that AI can be purchased. It is not an ERP solution that you can go through 3-4 options and pick one. Every organisation needs a different and tailor-made AI solution. Second, it that organisations need separate designations such as CAO and Chief AI Officer. Bringing separate designation can only propagate AI and not implement AI. The third is that people often think that building an ML algorithm will start learning and delivering on its own. This is the biggest myth due to which a lot of solutions are not able to achieve the required benefits.”
–Piyush Chowhan, Senior VP and CIO, Arvind Lifestyle Brands
“There is one aspect which to my own vantage point I always believe that just implementing an aggregation of data, infrastructure, technology may not be enough. Because eventually, we are trying to mimic the human brain. Somewhere adjacent competencies such as behavioural science, design thinking are coming to the fore. Organisations are implementing design thinking into AI because of a lot of they want transformation, disruption and innovation, which cannot be accomplished otherwise.”
–Sameer Dhanrajani, Chief Strategy Officer, Fractal Analytics
“Artisanal data scientist exists no more. Hand made models are no longer the trend and sun is setting on the artisanal way of performing actions in data science.”
–Sandeep Mittal, MD, Cartesian Consulting
“What universities are doing wrong today is that they are teaching courses. They are not teaching real-world use cases. India is at an amazing place and has an immense market for AI researchers to make a lot of profit. It is important to set up next-gen universities and educational institutions that help in creating better people, better engineers and even Eienstiens of the AI world.”
–Sukant Khurana, Researcher and Entrepreneur
“There are many challenges in lateral hiring. First is there are so many online programs today that are good in imparting theoretical knowledge, but practical implementation lacks majorly. Second is the lack of infrastructure and unavailability of actual data. Many a time they deal with dummy data which doesn’t address the scale that we are looking for. Third is that lateral hires are not willing to start fresh.”
