The AI revolution is spreading across India and the world by leaps and bounds. Artificial intelligence is now part of everyday life and assists us in a wide variety of applications. AI is used in smart alarms, iPhones and spam call detection. Instagram, YouTube and WhatsApp rely heavily on AI to process and personalise content. Traffic systems use live data from millions of phones to help identify the fastest routes. At work and in education, AI is improving productivity through writing, grammar checks, ChatGPT, meeting summaries, captions and coding. It can write computer code and help detect copying and plagiarism in schools. In online shopping, Amazon and Flipkart use AI to recommend products and send price-drop alerts. Swiggy and Zomato use AI to suggest dishes and restaurants. AI can also dub films into different languages. In healthcare, Apple devices can detect irregular heartbeats, sleep apnoea and stress. AI can estimate food calories from menus and photographs. It can read X-rays and CT scans faster and is also being explored for detecting mental health concerns. AI is helping banks detect fraud in UPI and other banking transactions within seconds, while blocking suspicious transactions. It can also help provide loans to people without a traditional credit history by analysing data from phones and UPI transactions. Bank chatbots can answer many customer queries instantly.
AI assists services such as Ola and Uber with dynamic pricing and driver matching in certain situations. It can help detect traffic violations and track missing people. In smart electricity grids, AI predicts demand and helps manage power use more efficiently. AI is also being used to predict floods and droughts linked to climate change. Chatbots are increasingly being used to handle passport and tax-related grievances. AI analyses data from the James Webb Space Telescope to help scientists identify planets in distant galaxies and study their atmospheres for signs such as oxygen that could indicate the possibility of life. AI can predict weather patterns days in advance, helping people prepare before extreme conditions arrive. It saves time in writing, planning and drafting emails, reducing tasks that could take 20 or 30 minutes to just a few seconds. AI is becoming a game changer by acting as a personal assistant, tutor and editor. It removes many small, two-minute tasks that can add up to hours of work. Instead of taking 20 minutes, some tasks can now be completed in 10 seconds. There is a growing culture of relying on AI solutions in almost every sphere of life. While AI offers enormous benefits and convenience, it is also increasingly shaping our expectations, imagination and dependence on technology in our day-to-day lives.
Ashley Noronha, Fatorda
