Nobody knows for sure what the post-COVID world will look like. But you can certainly bet it's going to be different. The pandemic has already pummeled the global economy and exposed weaknesses in supply chains and vintage software systems. But it has also accelerated automated delivery of goods and services, autonomous customer interactions and forced companies once skeptical of work-from-home culture to embrace it more than ever before. "And, yet, for many executives," says Muthulakshmi (Lakshmi) N, Global Head, Intelligent Process Automation and AI at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), "a major roadblock to scaling automation is the misconception that aggressive, holistic automation will produce widespread job loss. But this view fails to imagine the new types of jobs that will be created when automation frees employees from work that can be done faster, better, and less expensively by artificial intelligence (AI)."

How can artificial intelligence fit into human life and society in India? That will be the primary focus of a high-powered team tasked by the Indian government to understand and recommend how best AI can be shoehorned into India, the largest contributor to the global workforce in the next 10 years. The 18-member task force, set up by the central government on August 25, has been asked to make recommendations to leverage AI, widely acknowledged as an altering force in the world economy in the next few decades, for the country's economic benefit. Other mission objectives include a policy and legal framework to accelerate deployment of AI technology and five-year recommendations for specific government, industry, and research programmes. The task force has identified over a dozen domains of focus.

If the government springs any more demonetisation-like surprises in the future, banks just might be better equipped to deal with it with a higher degree of automation and artificial intelligence. Not the Goddess of wealth, but an aptly-named two-feet-tall humanoid robot that can answer any query related to banking transactions, account balance or interest rate. Developed by the Coimbatore-based Vishnu Engineering, the robot is designed to provide information to customers and answer their related queries. "Usually when a customer enters a bank and goes to the'may I help you' counter, a set of questions take care of most customers' requirements. So the fundamental concept behind the robot is to answer all those questions," says N Kamakodi, MD & CEO, City Union Bank.

City Union Bank (CUB) has become the first bank in India to introduce a robot to deal with customer queries. Called Lakshmi, the robot is based on the IBM Watson artificial intelligence (AI) engine. Lakshmi is based in a CUB branch in Chennai and is currently the only version of a "humanoid banker" CUB has got. However, there are plans to introduce 25-30 robots across the bank's key branches by the end of this year if Lakshmi proves a success with customers. Lakshmi speaks English, can gesture and engage in conversations.