AI & The Future of Machine Intelligence

A podcast recap with AI Expert & Strategist, Karthik Ramakrishnan

Recently, we did a podcast episode for our ​First Name Basis​ Series with Karthik Ramakrishnaan, AI Strategy & Enablement Expert, and our CEO Sheetal Jaitly. Although everyone tuned in from their remote locations, we lifted our drinks with them and indulged in a talk that included anecdotes, predictions and wisdom all the way through. Here’s some of our favourite takeaways from their conversation:

Before Karthik reached his status of an AI Strategy and Enablement VP, he had a taste of both failure and success. He was building startups right after his MBA. The first one collapsed just after 6 months, but the second one made a huge success in the mobile advertising network. You might have heard of it, Blu trumpet by Hatch Labs, New York. After all that, in 2012, he got into Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning after the breakthrough in neural network technology. He also shared a story behind the research that was going on in this field, which got funded regardless of the fruitless results for years, and eventually became a legendary breakthrough.

He spent his three years in learning, when the whole world was trying to figure out what to do with this AI technology. They were way ahead and ended up “building game changing end to end systems powered by data and models with predictive powers.” Their mission was to be a global company from day one.

He explained a real world use case of a classic retailing problem of shelf assortment — How AI better predicts which items are going to fade out soon and which items will be in demand. He also described the working of a fraud detection system used by big corporations, flow of goods and use of information, and data to better help your customers.

Karthik busted the industry myth of data and models — that AI is not as simple as we think. You cannot just give data to a data scientist and expect him to perform a miracle. There are multiple factors that come into play, hence the requirement of expertise. When we have data, expertise and partners under one umbrella, transformation is bound to happen.

So how do we think about AI? And how is the government utilizing its power?

In December, 2019, a Canadian company, BlueDot, predicted the threats of a pandemic using their advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) Models by analyzing news reports all around the globe. This detection of the rise of COVID-19 in its premature stage was a huge deal in the AI community.

Pockets of Government are using AI nowadays for better prediction models similar to the one explained. With the power of AI, we can detect peaks in COVID-19’s spread, we can predict how social distancing is preventing the infection and better allocate the staff where the outbreak is forecasted. All of this with the help of interconnected models and data points.

What factor is actually holding us back?

We do not have the proper data yet. And without data, our AI models cannot work. This lockdown has created a lot of frustration in our country among people. The main reason behind the lack of data is that, for collecting certain types of data, laws and policies need to be passed by the government. This is for preventing its misuse against the very own people who gave it. Hence, all these things create a friction in the process and slow down our progress.

Some predictions …

After a light conversion, this discussion took a serious turn of events and looked into the possible Post-COVID scenarios, and tackled the questions such as how will this pandemic change consumer behavior for a long period of time? How will companies cope up with this new consumer behavior?” Due to this pandemic, a lot of companies are letting go of their people and trying to bring more digitization into their realm. This is the time when they are considering bringing AI into their workflow, so they can decrease the head counts and increase their operating efficiency. But as Karthik said, jobs are going to reduce and their nature is going to change. Jobs will become more interesting when we’ll automatize the day-to-day mundane tasks.

These words of wisdom truly mesmerized us and this was just the beginning. Head to the whole podcast to hear the thoughts of top industry leaders on our current situation and emergence of AI and the future of Machine Learning.

Listen to the podcast here.

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Karthik Ramakrishnan is a 20-year veteran of the Canadian tech ecosystem with a mission to help global organizations achieve their unique vision for artificial intelligence. I believe it’s possible and vital for every business to define a compelling strategy for AI: a roadmap for creating value in the short term while building capabilities to win in the long term.

TribalScale is a global innovation firm that helps enterprises adapt and thrive in the digital era. We transform teams and processes, build best-in-class digital products, and create disruptive startups. Learn more about us on our website. Connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook!