Union minister says AI, IoT will change tech landscape

VISAKHAPATNAM: Union IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Tuesday has forecast that technologies like internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence will majorly shape the future of technology landscape and economy in general.

Addressing a meeting in virtual mode after inauguration of the Centre of Excellence on IoT and AI in Andhra University, a joint venture in Visakhapatnam between Nasscom and ministry of electronics and information technology, Chandrasekhar said it is absolutely essential that centres of excellence remain not just academic extensions of universities, but are live, breathing growing centres of energy, dynamism, entrepreneurship, and technology development of the kind that one must deliver on in the coming years.

AP industries minister Mekapati Goutham Reddy asserted that Andhra Pradesh government in itself is an incubation hub. “We have nine technologies, which we have said are going to be the sunrise technologies for world events. One is artificial Intelligence and machine learning, second is robotic process automation, third is edge computing, which is an extension of cloud computing; fourth is quantum computing, fifth is virtual reality and augmented reality, sixth is blockchain, seventh is IoT, eighth is 5G and ninth is cyber security. If AP can be a world-class leader in any of these nine technologies, we are talking about a trillion-dollar economy coming to the shores of Andhra Pradesh,” Goutham Reddy declared.

NASSCOM president Debjani Ghosh said centres of excellence have become melting points that connect different ecosystems to understand the big problems that technology can solve. IT ministry and Nasscom will bring together healthcare professionals, start-ups and tech industries for figuring out ways one can address the critical issue of ensuring that every Indian has access to healthcare, no matter where they are, Debjani added.