Towards a Connected, Collaborative, & Intuitive Tomorrow: Redefining the Future with a Blink

When you think of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and other new-age, phygital-centric technology, what comes to mind? Does Skynet, HAL 9000, and the Matrix – machines eager to overthrow and kill humans – loom larger than life, or are you reminded of R2D2 and C3PO, the lovable droids from the Star Wars franchise?

Either way, you are more prescient than you would credit yourself – the future belongs to AI and its allies.

This transition is evident across industries, with respondents to a survey by a leading technology publication projecting healthy double digit adoption in their respective domains by the end of next year. Of these, manufacturing ranks among the top two segments witnessing a robust AI-enabled solution adoption paradigm across diverse use cases ranging from product research, development, and production; process and quality control; inventory management; and predictive maintenance. As an early adapter, the healthcare sector is already leading the field by leveraging AI and ML (Machine Learning)-enabled solutions to expand its coverage and enhance outcomes across the board, while autonomous cars now seem within our reach.

As the future shapes up, I believe that we should prepare for a ‘Connected, Collaborative, and Intuitive’ AI-enabled future, one that will constitute the real-world equivalent of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. The world, as they say, would evolve at a blink!

What this translates to is the creation of a truly ‘Phygital’ landscape, combining best-in-class digital capabilities with the on-ground physical reality. This involves:

Creating Connections:

A connected ecosystem, leveraging smart operations, low-latency, and hyper-coverage, will form the basis of the future.

From connecting individual devices in a revitalized Internet of Things (IoT), to driving on-road vehicles via advanced V2X (Vehicle to Everything) solutions, to ensuring connected shop floors and hospital setups - a robust, embedded AI-enabled network would form the basis of the journey leveraging Edge connectivity, cloud optimization, integrated user experiences, embedded DevOps, and secured connections.

Ensuring Collaborations:

An intelligent being in isolation is incapable of reaching its full potential. This is also true of an AI system which, while ground-breaking in its capabilities, could be less-than-useful when in isolation. Enhancing its abilities to drive collaborations, across enabling Level 5 autonomy, digital twins, autonomous surgical robots, and collaborative manufacturing, would therefore involve leveraging smart IoT, multi cloud, AIDevSecOps, general AI and holographic interfaces as some of the key drivers of the tomorrow.

Enabling Intuition:

A connected and collaborative AI system is ready to scale the next peaks - focusing on becoming intuitive. Self-healing machines, 360 degree vision and care, automated network provisioning and reliable yet flexible planning are some of the key developments that can be expected out of this intuitive AI-enabled future, with embedded and explainable AI, high performance cloud, digital identities and touchless interfaces constituting the core of the journey. The future holds exciting possibilities as AI liberates human effort from the mundane drudgery of existence. Whether we are bold enough to leverage the emerging scenario could very well be a step forward akin to the discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, or the landing on the moon. For after all, whether it is the Matrix or Skynet, we humans do tend to triumph in the end!

The future holds exciting possibilities as AI liberates human effort from the mundane drudgery of existence. Whether we are bold enough to leverage the emerging scenario could very well be a step forward akin to the discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, or the landing on the moon.

For after all, whether it is the Matrix or Skynet, we humans do tend to triumph in the end!

As published on NASSCOM ER&D Digest VOL 6. Click here to download the full digest.