Trust and people's judgement will generate a higher value than pure technology in an era dominated by artificial intelligence and machine learning, Genpact CEO NV'Tiger' Tyagarajan said. New York-based Tyagarajan told ET in an interview that, going forward, AI would stand for Augmented Intelligence and not Artificial Intelligence. He also talked about the impact of the recent Delhi violence on India's global image and the scare from the Covid-19 virus. How are you striking a balance with tech like AI and ML? Our focus on processes and understanding of the industry hasn't changed since 2005.

Neon, the artificial human prototype conceptualized by computer scientist and inventor Pranav Mistry, created waves recently. The President and CEO of Samsung's STAR Labs told ET in an exclusive interview that he created Neon because human beings are unable to connect with artificial intelligence (AI) assistants such as Apple's Siri. The Palanpur (Gujarat)-born Mistry, considered one of the best innovative minds in the world right now, said Neon will be a companion to the elderly and to those who are lonely and could even work as fashion models or news anchors. The 38-year-old also spoke about the dangers posed by AI,echoing Google parent Alphabet Inc's chief Sundar Pichai who recently called upon governments to regulate AI. Edited Excerpts: When you started thinking about Neon, what was the problem you were trying to solve?

Amazon Inc, the world's largest online retailer, is being known these days as more of a technology company, and rightly so. Technology is at the core of whatever Amazon does -- from algorithms that forecast demand and place orders from brands, and robots that sort and pack items in warehouses to drones that will soon drop packages off at homes. At its new Go Stores, for instance, advances in computer vision have made it possible to identify the people walking in and what products they pick up, helping add them to their online shopping carts. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the world's richest man, is always pulling new rabbits out of his hat, like next-day or same-day shipping and cashier-less stores. Besides, there is Blue Origin, the aerospace company privately owned by Bezos, which is on a mission to make spaceflight possible for everyone.

Accenture is spending $1 billion in re-training training its employees every year as the company sees its customers are increasingly demanding newer technology-led services. The tech services major said it has trained nearly 80% of its technology services employees in technologies such as data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing - broadly referred as digital technologies. Digital currently contributes more than 60% of Accenture's $43.2 billion revenue. Nearly 55% of Accenture's employees are in technology services roles globally. "We had (nearly) 200000 people across 180 countries and we pitched that as our strength. One of the clients once asked me it is your strength or weakness, do you really need so many people in future. It was a big question at that point of time we took decision to rotate to new. So our investment in talent is close to a billion dollar globally and nearly 80% of tech services talent are trained in new," said Bhaskar Ghosh, group chief executive, Accenture Technology Services.

In a classroom in rural Maharashtra, students stare at a screen as it reads out their English textbook. The teacher occasionally clicks on a word for its Marathi translation -- the primary language of most students at the school -- or shows them a picture to make them understand a word. This method of learning has started to significantly improve the quality of English education in Maharashtra's government schools. Sanjay Gupta, Chief Executive Officer of EnglishHelper, which created the technology platform, the company developed it after researching the most efficient way to learn a new language. "The challenge is to get exposure to language as a student. This is a multisensory, repetition-based platform which won't confuse the student," he says.

Five years ago, Hyderabad resident Tulasi Mathi was forced to quit her job as a maths teacher due to health issues and the birth of her two children. But today, the 29-year-old does data labelling and makes up to Rs 15,000 a month. The money isn't much but it's more than she made as a teacher, and enough to pay her kids' school fees and her own expenses.She chanced on data labelling work through a YouTube video in 2017. Today, she scans videos and marks and labels objects encountered by self-driving cars. Her output is used to train artificial intelligence algorithms powering such cars. All Mathi knows is that it makes her life easier.

Tech Mahindra has rolled out a new version of its artificial intelligence and machine learning platform GAiA. The latest version of GAiA is aimed to help organisations in real time deployment of AI and ML driven services and comes with features such as Jupyter Notebook Integration, AutoML support, Model Validation, Security and Governance, said the company in a press release. GAiA is an industrialized version of the open-source Acumos platform, which was co-created by Tech Mahindra & AT&T. According to the company, GAiA 2.0 will enable comprehensive AI and ML driven platform capabilities and services to be deployed across mainstream, optimizing enterprise operations in real time across industry verticals. This also offers "an enriched marketplace" of models and numerous features to empower enterprises across industry verticals to build, manage, share rapidly deploy services and applications.

The latest version of the platform supports most of the commonly used AI and ML development frameworks and toolkits including Python, Sci-kit learn, H..

In April last year, a medical device powered by artificial intelligence (AI) received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), marking a historic moment in healthcare globally. The IDx-DR, a software algorithm that uses AI to analyse images of the eye using a camera, achieved an 87.4% accuracy rate while detecting'more than mild' diabetic retinopathy, a condition where high blood sugar levels damage the blood vessels in the retina. For IT services firms, which are already developing AI and machine language (ML) tools for other uses and industries, extending AI and ML capabilities to healthcare is a fairly non-complex process, and comes with a large upside. Rather than doing it entirely on their own though, these companies are partnering hospital chains and niche players in the field to acquire the required domain expertise. For instance, Japanese technology firm NTT DATA Services tied up with Pune's Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital last year to use an AI-based solution to diagnose emphysema, a chronic condition of the lungs.

They built a technology to speed up cardiac diagnosis and treatment. Their product combines equipment with artificial intelligence and medical expertise. For instance, when the wearable device tracks the heart rate of the patient, the information is sent to a centrally located hub where a qualified expert is available 24/7. The specialist interprets the electrocardiogram and sends the report through an SMS as well as through a message on Tricog's mobile app. This helps in faster diagnosis. The jury took note of the critical use of technology and its requirement and relevance in a country like India.