Everyone knows that the era of Artificial intelligence has arrived. Recentrapid advancements in AI has created ardent interest all over the world. Basically, what is AI? The father of artificialintelligence John McCarthy has defined AI as ” the science and engineering ofmaking intelligent machines especially intelligent computer programs”. AI develops machines with humanlike intelligencei.
e. process information and producing output ina manner similar to how humans behave, comprehend and solve problems.AI createsthis possibility to develop such machine and adapt accordingly. Let us take an example of visiting a website more thanonce, fed with user’s online data behavior, anetwork of AI algorithms will work in the backgroundprocesses, makes an intelligentguess, and displays advertisement that can retain the user’s attention. Thus AI is the technology that will allow businessesto be informed about client’s needs evenbefore they want it.
This is a great achievement which can improve productivityby the copious amount and merits the needof its mention these days.Importance ofAI cannot be ignored as we see it helping us in our day-to-day activities frombeing voice activated assistants in tablets, smartphones and computer’s (like Amazon’s Alexa) that follows user’svoice command to complete assigned tasks to using highly sophisticated techtools like Google’s AlphaGo, IBM Watson and Arria NLG(natural language generator) thatacts as an analyst and writer in one, crunching millions of data points persecond , processing and analyzing it so as to generate easy to read reports muchfaster than human brain thereby allowing user’s to focus on high-value tasks. These are just the tips ofthe iceberg we see showing how artificialintelligence helps us, business andsociety at large. According to various studies and researches, new AI technologies will fuel global economic growth asproductivity and consumption increases in the near future. The future looksbright with AI just scratching the surface from developing efficient powertransformers, smarter developed supply chains, fully automatic transportationsystems to solving world problems ofhealth and food shortage. AI has unparalleled potential and is expected in thecoming times to help improve and perform tasks more efficiently and accurately ,tosave society’s cost, money and time, to enablehuge production and labour productivity, to deliver uninterrupted services toindividuals in the country and to overalloptimize the resources available to the generation so as to help in the overalleconomic development and transformation of economy to better serve social, economic needs.
Is ArtificialIntelligence the way to boost economic growth?ArtificialIntelligence has the potential to impel and enhance economic growth. Thecombination of man and machine can be used to solve the economies difficultproblems. As global tech major Accenture already calls artificial intelligenceas another new and tremendously important factor of production both for now andfuture one can simply infer that AI will help in labor and capital productivity as these are major investmentfactors of production which can help in introducing, developing and boostingnew sources of growth. Hence AI helps in expanding the role of people, entrepreneurs, government, organizations creditingthem to experiment and innovate and devise various means to propel growth inbusiness and economy as a whole. It explains three ways that can increase India’s economic growththrough artificial intelligence can be by organizing intelligent automation andaugmenting and automating complex mundane human tasks that can be taken over by AI ,empowering current workforces withnew skills, knowledge to cope and help in advancement of AI, and to buildand enhance AI innovation that can beused for structural economic transformation which can hence result in developmentof Indian economy.Mark Purdy who is theManaging Director and Chief Economist of Accenture Research has emphasized on theimportance of AI and how “AI can have a pervasive impact on business profitsbecause it affects nearly every part of the organization from production, to sales, to innovation.
” Theidea is by taking up routine work by AI,the employees can focus their concentration on doinghigh-value work.It was the research conductedby Accenture and Frontier economics which estimated economic impact of Artificialintelligence on various important economies of the world using 2035 as the target year to absorb newtechnology impact, segregating the study into two outlines- one was thebaseline scenario that gave annual estimated economic growth rate for future under current assumptions and the other was AI scenario which showedexpected economic growth once AI effect has been added to the economy. The results were published in the report “Rewire for Growth” and most importantones are explained below. Figure 1: Economic impact of AI on various economies Source: Rewire forgrowth report, 2017Here, figure1 clearly shows the real gross value ofmajor economies of the world have a higher growth if AI is taken intoconsideration in the economy with India and China benefitting the most thanexcluding it as seen in the case of baseline. Examining the Case of India further, figure 2 explains how With AIabsorbed in the economy India’s GVA willaccelerate the economic growth by 957 billion US dollars, adding 1.3 percentper year to its growth thereby raising national income by 15 percent in 2035.Thesize of the Indian economy in 2035 isestimated to be 6,397 billion US dollars if we don’t take AI.
However,including artificial intelligence as a factor,it is expected to raise India’s size to 7.355 billion US dollar. The figure alsoshows if AI is categorized into Intelligentautomation, augmentation and total factor productivity what would be theirindividual contribution towards India’s economic growth. Figure 2: Indian economy Gross Value added in 2035 by AI.
Source: Rewire for Growth, Accenture,2017.Indian governmentto provide social welfare (currently Indian Railwayand RailTech are working with ISRO tobuild safety mechanisms, using AI and machine learning to make train travelsafer) and Indian firms to transform their businesses in various sectors likehealth, education, finance, automobile, andretail are increasingly harnessing AI. .Oneexample is ManipalHospitals, Bengaluru, that shows how AI is increasingly being tappedin healthcare by providing better diagnostics and improving patient experience with AI-powered digitalintelligence solutions that are using IBM Watson for Oncology, acognitive-computing development platform,to help doctors identify personalizedcancer care options across the country.
Looking at global trends, large businesses and digital platform and willplay a key role in innovating and unlocking the economic value of AI. Realising AI’s potential Thereis a need to set up clear national based AI developmentplan for India’s economy similarto what other countries are doing, educate people about AI and its growingimportance and enhance research in this area.One important step in theright direction has been shown by Nirmala Sitharaman thethen Commerce Minister who set up an 18member Artificial Intelligence TaskForce last year in August to accelerate and enable economic agenda of development using artificialintelligence in the fields of national security, IT and hardware, retail,customer engagement, education, finance,healthcare, agriculture, develop deeper expertise and provide tech-enabledutility facilities to citizens. Hence, thereis a need to make most of this AI opportunity. AI will benefit the mankind and expandpeople’s potential. The government, policymakers, business leaders, organization, andinstitution must be united to work towards the AI revolution.
This will only help in accelerating our economic opportunities in the coming years.
