KOCHI: The two-day #FUTURE conclave, Kerala’s first-ever Global Digital Summit, beginning here on Thursday will see senior state government officials holding talks with industry leaders and top executives of some of the world’s leading companies to learn how to embrace the new wave of IT sweeping across the world.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will inaugurate the summit at Le Meridien, which is hosting the high-profile event. Special interest groups for various sectors, consisting of top officials from the departments concerned, have been constituted to lead these official meetings to discuss business, investment opportunities and a range of other subjects while the summit itself will be a collective brainstorming exercise with the aim of creating a road map for Kerala’s digital future.
Meetings have been scheduled with Nandan Nilekani, non-executive chairman, Infosys; Christoph Mueller, chief digital and innovation officer, Emirates Group; Roland Schuetz, group CIO, Lufthansa Group; Alok Ohrie, president and MD, India Commercial, Dell EMC; and Byju Raveendran, founder and CEO, Byju’s.
The government will also hold talks with Natesh Manikoth, chief data officer, Federal Aviation Administration, US; Thomas Zacharia, director, Oak- Ridge National Laboratory; T K Kurien, managing partner and chief investment officer, Premji Invest and Dinu John Parel, Global CIO, Dover Corporation. They are among the nearly 30 global experts who will be sharing their knowledge and experiences during discussions scheduled over two days covering sectors from travel and transportation; big data and health and sustainability to education & skills; technology and banking, finance and retail.
“We do not intend #FUTURE to be simply about IT as a business or service; we want this to be more of a window into the digital world of tomorrow where technology touches the lives of people in ways that may be inconceivable now. We want Kerala to be ahead of the digital curve, and our young entrepreneurs and startup founders to take advantage of the opportunities it present,” said M Sivasankar, secretary, Electronics and Information Technology, Government of Kerala.
“The inputs of people who are at the forefront of technology will help us frame policy and action plan for the future.”#FUTURE is a brainchild of Kerala’s High Power IT Committee (HPIC) headed by Infosys Co-Founder S D Shibulal and one of the outcomes of the summit will be the formation of a 150-member ‘Digital Achievers Network of Kerala Origin’ who will become the brand ambassadors of Kerala and championing the state’s efforts to become a knowledge industry hub. Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, and Joseph Sirosh, head of Artificial Intelligence of the company, will lend their presence at the event through video conference.
CM to open meet
The Chief Minister will inaugurate the summit at 10 am on Thursday. Sivasankar, Shibulal and V K Mathews, member, HPIC & convenor #Future, will address the delegates comprising professionals, entrepreneurs, academicians, key influencers and other stakeholders from across the globe.
‘It’s inevitable that workforce train themselves in new technologies’
Manoj Nair
CEO,SmartCity (Kochi) Infrastructure Pvt Ltd
In an interconnected world where human interaction has become central to the efforts of digitisation, newer technologies are causing disruption towards creating an efficient and transformational future. The impact of such disruptions are predicted to deliver positive outcomes in the lives of people. Yet, these would open up debates that will only help further the exponential improvement to address the associated challenges.
Be it the Internet of Things, blockchain, artificial intelligence, virtual or augmented reality to name a few, these are future technologies that will create opportunities across different business verticals. It will challenge the conventional norms of people interaction and communication. Thus, adapting to such technologies, as they mature, will become crucial for both enterprises and people. While not all these are in advanced stages, some, like block chain, have already found its application across various businesses at a faster pace. Data processing capabilities of technologies like block chain will propel business decisions with significant trust embedded by way of transactional security. Another such benefit is the facilitation of reliable crowdfunding that such technologies will offer.
Future technologies are expected to facilitate, among others, deployment of high-speed transportation systems, interactive smart homes, driverless cars, energy management, climate change, medical diagnosis, seamless logistics and distribution solutions and efficient and secure financial transactions.
SMB revolution: The road to a digital future
Sudhir Nayar
Managing Director,Commercial Sales (SAARC) - Cisco
As I travel across India and meet entrepreneurs and small business owners, one common theme I often come across is their vision of making it big and how they are looking at digitisation to realise their vision. In an era when every large enterprise is talking about digital being the be all and end all of their strategies, I believe Indian SMBs need to go digital as soon as possible to stay globally competitive. Combined with this is the fact that if they are serving the Indian market, they are going to serve one of the largest consumer ecosystems in the world.
The opportunity
The internet penetration is only going to rise by 50 per cent, and that’s an understatement. According to the TRAI and BCG-Google study, there are 350 million internet users in India and 1.03 billion mobile subscribers.That’s not all. If you look at the annual reports of the Ministry of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises, you will find small businesses contribute to 37 per cent of the Indian economy. Now, here is the icing on the cake. If SMBs go digital their contribution to GDP grows up to 48 per cent as pointed out by a Google and KPMG study. The report also adds going digital also adds more jobs. According to a report by Zinnov, there are 51 million SMBs in India, and they employ over 116 million people.
However, the KPMG-Google study says a staggering 68 per cent of Indian SMBs are offline and only 2 per cent are selling their products and services online.This is a tiny percentage by any standard, and I feel they have every reason to be hostile in attitude towards technology when a large IT giant sells solutions to them. Until today, they marketed products usually meant for large enterprises, and many entrepreneurs and small business owners feared the capex incurred on digital resources could derail their business plans or even burn their money.
The way to go digital
Of course, new age SMBs like in the start-up world are digital first before thinking about anything else. However, there is a whole brick and mortar world. SME entrepreneurs will have to remove the fear of the unknown when it comes to investing in the digital. I reiterate the fact that SMBs cannot go digital blindly.
‘The time is not far when machines will assist the courts’
Ameer Shahul
Senior regulatory affairs executive,IBM Corporation
Do we need the current court system where counsels shout each other down to make their points heard?
Does it need to consume so much time of judges if most of the disputes and prosecutions can be adjudged objectively with very little personal involvement of judges?
How can the worrying trend of ‘delayed justice’ due to piling up of cases be ended?
These were the questions I posed to the students of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) in Bengaluru, where I was invited to give a lecture recently on the role of Artificial Intelligence in legal profession.
If you have been following the developments in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning space, you will understand time is not too far when machines will assist court administration, adjudication and even support counsels to a great extent. One convincing reason for this transition is machines are too fast and accurate in learning and memorising indefinite amounts of records and documentation and can help analyse and adjudicate cases without any subjectivity or bias.
Machine Learning is reaching a level where machines can read and memorise the entire universe of legal literature, national and sub-national statutes, national and international case laws, legal publications and papers in legal journals, in addition to general news articles. Machines will be able to recall its memory for any relevant dispute or prosecution and analyse objectively for arriving at fair and equitable decisions in pico or femtoseconds. Machines can today analyse a specific case with respect to its jurisdictional statues, circumstantial and documental evidence of the case and relevant case law, and help adjudicate the matter in a just and fair manner.
As research and development continue in this space, the march of AI cannot be stopped. The only factor that can hold back the judiciary from embracing AI is the limited progress of digitisation in the judicial systems.
Unless AI and Machine Learning are deployed effectively in judicial administration, trial and adjudication of cases at the earliest, the worrying trend of piling up of cases from the lowest courts to the highest courts across the world will continue unabated. It is important to appreciate that AI when effectively put to use can also play a key role to help address challenges of transparency and red tape. With the responsible adoption of AI, judicial systems around the world can bring about drastic transformations to ensure that justice is neither delayed nor denied.