International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad was the proud host of the 1st KCIS Symposium 
on Artificial Intelligence. The Symposium took place on 6th of August 2016. The theme of the symposium was “AI and Society”. The conference featured speakers like Prof Mark S Fox, Prof Raj Reddy, Shri Jayesh Ranjan, Shri K Ananth Krishnan,Prof C V Jawahar and a Panel discussion on “Artificial Intelligence for Societal Impact”.
The symposium was inaugurated by Dr F C Kohli along with Prof Raj Reddy, Shri K Ananth Krishnan, Prof P J Narayanan and Prof Vasudeva Varma. Prof. Mark Fox from University of Toronto was the keynote speaker for the event. He discussed the Role of Intelligent Systems in Building India’s Smart Cities. He talked about how cities cannot be understood as a compilation of isolated modules. Cities are different modules interplayed together and are highly interdependent. This would also mean that failure will occur but we would have to focus on infrastructure the same way we would focus on the engineering aspect. Shri Jayesh Ranjan, Secretary of IT & Communications from Govt of Telangana discussed Societal perspective of AI. He discussed two major challenges to hit a balance between the AI development and society. He talked about the lack of complete connectivity in our society as rural population is not on the digital highway. Such obstacles preventing large scale adoption of AI in the social sphere of a country like India.
The next speaker Shri K Ananth Krishnan, CTO, TCS. Mr. Ananth Krishna talked about further integrating AI in solving the problems of the nation and developing the nation. He emphasised on the integration of smart power grids to avoid power cuts. Mr. Krishnan also talked in depth about transport and how to transform it. Shri Ananth’s talk It was followed by a discussion by Prof C V Jawahar of IIIT Hyderabad on vision intelligence and its applications. He discussed the possibilities of mass implementation and autonomous navigation and internet vision using the AI technology. In his opinion, the technology has allowed us to understand images, objects and helped us reach a more accurate system. Now more efficient man machine interfaces can be built.
Prof Raj Reddy of Carnegie Mellon University and Chairman of IIIT Hyderabad delivered a talk titled Reaching the People at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Prof. Reddy believes the technology should be used to reach the people at the bottom of the pyramid. He emphasised on the importance of speech based systems. By reaching the grassroot level of economy the cost will be reduced and more varieties are introduced to the market which makes the purchasing power goes up. The last event of the day was a highly interactive Panel discussion on “Artificial Intelligence for Societal Impact” including Prof Mark S Fox, Prof Narendra Ahuja, Shri K Ananth Krishnan, Prof P J Narayanan moderated by Prof Raj Reddy. Kohli Centre for Intelligent System is an upcoming research center for reallife problem solving using the tools of AI. IIIT Hyderabad has a intellectually charged and interactive session discussion the challenges and potential in the field of AI and how to involve the tools for betterment of society.
