“Digital Happiness? Just Raise Your Hand.”

As I stood up to present at the recent IIM Bangalore seminar on “AI and Machine Learning Conference” (organized by UNICOM and IIM – Calcutta, and held in IIM Bangalore, on 13^th and 14^th March) the only thing going through my mind was if the audience will be receptive to my points. I didn’t want to bore them with yet another presentation. However, I was confident that my gestures would keep them interested, especially the hand gestures. Witness the human side of machines Yes, I simply asked Alexa (Amazon’s virtual assistant) to open today’s presentation and my presentation was up and running on the screen. I could even transition between the slides just with my hand gestures. I tried to set the tone for an interesting presentation to follow. This is what I call the Natural Digital Experience (NDE). Be it the gestures or signs, machines are increasingly capable of understanding human language and forming a strong bond with us. This is the world that awaits us. In fact, we should be prepared to welcome AI in every facet of our life like cooking mouth-watering recipes! Imagine if you could simply order the robot to prepare your favourite exotic cuisine. With robots that can learn to cook you can even do this now. I strongly believe that such robots will drive digital happiness. They will collaborate with humans to enrich their experience. For instance, the Amazon Go experience which makes the shopping and checkout process extremely simple. How intelligent can machines be? With AI, machines are now capable of transcending the boundaries of communication and taking intelligent decisions. So, the future will not be just about driverless cars but how these cars can collaborate with each other and for say traffic conditions. Or, how a fleet of drones can coordinate with each other and make lifting heavy loads easier. These examples show how machines are now capable of collaborating with each other to assist humans. We also kept the audience engaged with a few real-life use cases like interacting with a coffee machine, AI helping doctors, and even Alexa taking pictures on cameras connected to edge devices. Some exciting facts about Alexa capturing pictures is available at #ThinkEdgeML on Twitter. I will talk more about the use cases in the next blog. Walking hand in hand with AI Our use cases kindled the audience interest and kept the session interactive. We showcased what AI is capable of and how it is assisting humans. This was the underlying message of our presentation and we delivered it successfully. The idea is that Machines can collaborate with each other to help humans achieve their objectives faster and better.