RAISE, 2020 AI Summit - An Overview

Kunwar Arpit Singh  

Intern, The Indian Learning Magzine Indian Society of Artificial Intelligence and Law

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RAISE 2020 (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment 2020) was a summit on Artificial Intelligence (AI) held virtually from October 5th to October 9th. Around 79,000 personnel from academia, the field of research and development and officials from 147 countries have participated in the summit. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and NITI Aayog were responsible for organising the summit. The objective of MeitY is based around e-Development of India and empowering Indian citizens via electronic means. The essential agendas of the summit were 'Leveraging AI for Pandemic Preparedness', 'The Impetus that Innovation Places on Digitisation', 'Inclusive AI' and 'Partnerships for Successful Innovation'. RAISE, 2020 came up as an important platform for the upcoming startup in India who are innovating in the field of Artificial Intelligence. On the 6th of October, the startups, which were selected through the AI Solution Challenge, presented their solutions based on machine learning and AI in the AI Startup Pitchfest.

The central idea of RAISE 2020 was to provide a platform to different minds from around the world who are specialising in the study of Artificial Intelligence and exchange their ideas for coming up with best possible solutions for present issues we face. RAISE, 2020 was aimed at framing a pathway for using AI for social transformation and development, inclusivity and empowering the Indian public in key areas such as healthcare, agriculture, education and smart mobility. There were 21 startups which were shortlisted from across different sectors, including healthcare, edtech, NLP, smart mobility and transportation, agriculture, and 15 of them were winners and 6 of them got a special mention. AI Startup Pitchfest was the name of the award and the jury granting the award consisted of experts from the AI industry, academia and the government. Those winning the first prize in each sector were awarded with rupees 20 lakhs each.

In the healthcare sector, SigTuple Technologies Private Limited was declared as the winners. Sasikala Devi won the special category award for her work rapid diagnostic and prognostic tool kit COVID-19 which was based on AI technology. Bengaluru-based startup SigTuple specialises in bringing together artificial intelligence, robotics, and data science to build smart screening solutions and make healthcare accurate, accessible, and affordable. In the education sector, CognizABle and Individual Learning Limited were the two winners included. Hind AI Labs won the special category award. CogniABle is excelling in the early detection and affordable treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorder. It achieves the same by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Embibe app is owned and operated by Individual Learning Pvt Ltd. Embibe is another AI startup which works towards maximising the potential of every student to the fullest extent through the time they spend in formal education and beyond

Dr Devi Prasad Shetty who is the Chairman and ED of the Narayana Hospitals said that AI-based software tools could help benefit the efforts of healthcare professionals and allow them to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic better. “For healthcare to be affordable and safer, pen and paper need to be replaced by mobile devices in the hands of doctors, nurses and medical technicians. Hospitals must begin collaborating with startups in the telemetric and robotics fields to be ready to face future pandemics” he added.

Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, CIO, Apollo Hospitals said that “the hospitals need to show urgency in adopting AI-based software tools. “Hospitals must act fast in adopting AI, catch the right data at the right time, build capacities with the right resources and build, deploy sustainable AI-driven tech solutions across practices,” said Sivaramakrishnan.

Dr. Harpreet Singh who is the Scientist and Head – Division of Biomedical Informatics of ICMR reiterated about the importance of the country's apex medical body to be using AI-based tools to quickly scale up COVID-19 testing in India. “AI is also being used to predict mortality rate with high accuracy” he concluded.

The Tamil Nadu and Karnataka showcased their initiatives to promote the use of AI in governance. Mr. R.B. Udhayakumar, IT Minister, Government Tamil Nadu and Mr. Sathyanarayana B.V., Deputy Head, Karnataka Startup Cell delivered keynote addresses.

Mr. Henri Verdier, the French Ambassador for Digital Affairs and Dr. Natalia Jimenez Lozano, Atos Director of HPC, AI and Quantum Life Sciences Center of Excellence, Cambridge, UK delivered keynote addresses at a session on AI governance and Institutional Mechanism for Collaboration and innovation. They talked about the need to build robust institutional mechanisms to encourage continued collaboration on AI between countries.

Ms. Elaine Tan, Advisor, Office of the Chief Economist and DG, ADB, Dr. Gaurav Aggarwal from Google Research, Mr. Prakash Kumar, CEO, GSTN, and Professor Ivan Oseledets from the Center for Computational and Data-intensive Science and Engineering, Skoltech all participated in a discussion on ways in which countries can harness data to create an intelligent database that could improve AI learning.

The event highlights were on building consent mechanisms around consumer data in emerging economies, which was headlined by Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan who is the Co-founder of Infosys, and Chairman of Axilor Ventures. Mr. Gopalakrishnan underlined the criticality of putting in place strong consent frameworks around consumers’ data so innovation in AI can truly bloom. “There are marked differences between data consent mechanisms in emerging economies and in ones emerging. India is on par with developed economies when it comes to data consent mechanisms. India now has the opportunity to become one of the first countries to put in place a simple, comprehensive framework for its data economy,” he said.

The event was concluded on the 9th of October. Throughout the summit, the recent pandemic remained a central idea, as was seen in the keynote addresses and different agendas set. The promotion of AI-based startups will provide much needed shot in the arm to them with the global economic recession ending the journey of many such innovative startups around the globe. The major issues which India face today can be vastly improved by the effective use of AI. But as we inch ever closer to a world dominated by machine learning, the issue of privacy and legality of it will arise.