We may not know it, but Artificial Intelligence has crept up on us, spurred by dozens of startup innovations.
Are you a user of Artificial Intelligence? Most of us would say, ‘no’ and most of us would be wrong.
We tend to think AI is used by large enterprise harnessing supercomputers which try to outwit humans at things like chess. The year gone by, has seen AI making an uninvited backdoor entry into our lives. A global study by enterprise software company Pega systems Inc. reveals that most consumers are surprised to learn they are already users of AI. Only 34 per cent of the respondents thought they had directly experienced AI, when in fact 84 per cent had actually used at least one AI-powered service or device — like virtual home assistants, intelligent chatbots, or predictive product suggestions. Less than half, knew that Microsoft’s virtual assistant Cortana or Amazon’s Alexa, iPhone’s Siri or the Google Assistant actually ran on AI. But make no mistake. AI is here; we might as well get used to it and make use of it.
Research by IT services leader Accenture, last week suggests that AI could pump nearly $957 billion into the Indian economy. Nice, if rather than overhyping the technology itself, businesses focus on using AI to provide real value for the rest of us. And as we glide into 2018 it looks like hundreds of Indian startups are doing just that. From banking to healthcare to education, they are creating a range of solutions, from AI-driven ‘bots’ to actual humanoid robots. What’s more, they are making it easier than ever for other developers to create intelligent apps or solutions. Delhi-based Engineer.ai has created a platform called Builder where one can use ready-made software building blocks, to achieve huge economies in the creative process. Another startup Ab sentia has launched an AI-based animation tool Norah AI which can be used to generate interactive content from animations and textures, to mobile games.
On this page today, we focus on innovative products and solutions that will touch you in the months ahead, all of them backed by brainy computer technology trying to mimic Man!
Raghav Gupta
Robotic Cook
Just chuck in the ingredients and Julia will do the rest for you
Nymble co-founder Raghav Gupta
Feed in your favourite recipe. Put in the ingredients and Julia, the personal robotic cook from the startup Nymble, will cook up the dish for you — as long as it is a one-pot meal. That means all Asian curries, dal, sambhar, rasam, pasta, soups, rice dishes, salads but not chapattis. A built-in HD camera let’s you see what’s cooking even if you are not around. Julia is in prototype stage and Nymble hopes to start taking orders this year.
Ria the ‘nutri’ bot
Leading health and fitness start-up, HealthifyMe is about to roll out the the world’s first-ever conversational AI-enabled nutritionist Ria. The chatbot uses key learnings obtained from HealthifyMe’s 150 million tracked meals and 10 million message exchanges. She will answer questions around nutrition and fitness via both audio and text in more than 10 languages and provides personalised responses based on the users’ lifestyle habits, says HealthifyMe CEO Tushar Vashisht. Subscription services range from Rs 999 to Rs 1699 per month.
Nino’ll teach you
Technopreneur Harihara Bojan had a vision: “If every kid out there gets a chance to play and learn with humanoid robots, then perhaps they would grow up and create a much better and smarter world through better technologies”. At Sirena Technologies his team has created, Nino, the affordable, humanoid robot and the complete ecosystem around it, for schools and research Institutes. Many schools have already created robotic labs around Nino.
Keep it natural!
Wizibots fuel the websites and mobile apps of many clients with an intelligent AI-powered bot that can converse with customers like humans do, with emotional intelligence. Verbinden co-founder Vinay Kumar says a good bot must provide instant solutions to customers when they most need them, gauge their mood and manage even the tough escalation scenarios. Wizibots do all that and they are being used by a global computer hardware company for hardware support and by 10,000 staff of US construction group to improve energy efficiency.
Senseforth co-founders (from left) Shridhar Marri, Krishna Kadiri and Ritesh Radhakrishnan.
Bot’s hat?
If you have used HDFC Bank’s smart tool EVA, you might have noticed she has recently started talking as well as texting. Creators, Senseforth went to create similar bots for HDFC Life, ICICI, ICICI Lombard, Edelweiss and Godrej Properties. Meanwhile, the original EVA just completed nine months, during which she answered 5 million queries from a million users. In 2018, many of Senseforth’s other bot clients will get talkative, says CEO Shridhar Marri.
Turn talk into text
A Bangalore start-up, Liv.ai, co founded by IIT Kharagpur graduates — Subodh Kumar, Sanjeev Kumar and Kishore Mundra — has created a software tool kit which helps equipment manufacturers provide a voice recognition feature in English and eight other Indian languages: Hindi, Punjabi, Kannada, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati and Marathi. The tool can be put in phones, tablets, PCs, TVs etc. Users can speak in their own tongue and have text appear on screen — in the script of the language. Once embedded in a tool like email, it will allow us to speak answers to mail and have them transcribed in any of these 10 languages. The good news is you can try out the speech to text tool for free on their website after selecting any of the eight Indian languages or English. Here is the link: https://liv.ai/
— IndiaTechOnline
