TECH{AI} July

Issue.01
Vol.01
TECH{AI}
T E C H N O L O G Y + A I + I O T
JULY 2016
IS AI
Booming?
THE MIT
Way
jULY / Free
Page 3
Navnit Krishna
CEO, AIRbots
N A V N I T K R I S H N A
C E O , I Y A N T R A S
CEO Interview
Startups on the rise
Disruption
Page 2
AI Startups
Culture
6 Page
Is iYantras poised to disrupt the AI scene in
Chennai?

PAGE 1
ABOUT
TECH {AI}
JULY 2016

TECH {AI}
INTERVIEW
PAGE 2
IS MSD, THE ONLY PLAYER IN
TOWN?
N N E L D W T H A N A N D
A I T R U E I
S E K H A R A N
C H A N D R A
A news article can include accounts
No, we aren't talking about
Dhoni here but Chennai's bestknown
AI company Mad Street
Den. We emailed Co-founder
Aswini Asokan a few questions
and she graciously replied
back. Here are some excerpts.
Q1:
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JULY 2016

PAGE 3
TECH {AI}
MAIN FEATURE
IS AI BOOMING?
JULY 2016
y S r i n i k e t h S r i n a t h
B
mage courtesy Pixabay
I
AI has seen an exponential growth in
the market. Facebook, IBM, Apple,
Google, Microsoft and other tech
titans are deeply researching into
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and
increasing their R&D budget. AI
startups such as Sentient
Technologies and Rethink Robotics
recently received funding worth
millions, respectively. AI Funding is at
a historical peak.
So why are these giants and VCs of
Silicon Valley pumping millions and
investing heavily in projects relating
to AI? Got to be something about AI -
right?
One reason for this boom is that
these machines are able to perform
particular tasks more efficiently and
effectively than humans can.
AI is not tangible; but an emotion,
and this is why it’s so incredible.
Robots differed from human beings
because they couldn’t experience
emotions in the way we did. Well,
guess what? Now they can!
In 1950, computer scientist Alan
Turing developed a test to
analyzehow close to an actual
human being the machine was in
terms of knowledge and actions.
The Turing Test involved a panel
of judges conversing with a
chatbot. If the bot’s replies were
close to that of a normal human
being, it had passed the test.
Cleverbot, Siri and Cortana are
examples of bots which can hold
a conversation with a human
without any external help.
Over the years, AI has been
getting closer and closer to
humans. Mimicking language is
one thing, but actually
understanding and inferring is
quite another.
The danger occurs when AI starts
replicating humans, essentially
replacing them in their line of
work.
JULY 2016

TECH {AI}
MAIN FEATURE
PAGE 3
Many fear that AI robots will steal
jobs, but it also creates new jobs. A
search on the US tech-job site
Dice.com this week revealed over
5000 AI jobs. Job roles listed
included:
Data Scientist
Business Intelligence Analyst
AI Application Developer
Game Developer
A successful example of AI usage is
the photo enhancing app Prisma.
which makes photos look like i
works of art. The app uses AI to
convert the user’s pictures into
complex paintings.
However, the Tay fiasco on Twitter
showed the dark side of AI. It
caused a PR nightmare for
Microsoft and showed just how
much AI had to improve to fit in
with our world.
Investors know that Artificial
Intelligence is the next big thing.
Dependence on AI is increasing,
and so is the demand for AI
experts.
Don’t get left behind. Prepare for
the AI boom! Make sure your own
job is secure before fretting over
what will happen when AI takes
over the world.
JULY 2016

Y S R I N A T H R A N G A ,
B
E A D - C O N T E N T S T R A T E G Y ,
H
TECH {AI}
FEATURE INTERVIEWD
PAGE 5
INTERVIEW WITH
NAVNIT KRISHNA
B L O G S A N D C O U R S E S
Interviewer: How are you doing?
Navnit: I’m doing fine.
Interviewer: Can you tell me something about iYantras?
Navnit: Yeah iYantras is basically a global artificial intelligence services and solutions firm.
We basically execute a top-down approach of envisioning customers’ real complex problems
and we use to solve it by partnering with a few of them.
Interviewer: So you have sponsored hackathon today. Tell me what is the reason for you to
sponsor this event?
Navnit: See, basically getting the artificial intelligence solutions and reaching it to people is
not so easy. Getting the real talent in this Indian market is also really getting tougher and
tougher. And there are only few startups that have also been there. See, there are three
things which I need to emphasize for me to get into this.
Basically we need to promote this artificial intelligence as a company to the young
engineers to make sure they are getting interested and start learning this technology. First
is that. Second is to hire the best AI talents for our own iYantras. If we find good resources,
we can hire them and we can give internship to them. Third thing is to invite new startups
like us to join us and making this responsibility of building a better world for the next
generation.
Interviewer: Excellent. So what kind of talent are you looking to hire in your company?
Navnit: Yeah basically, I will put it in three different ways. Definitely in this hackathon we
need technical resources. We are looking for Python, machine learning, MATLAB, deep
learning technology enthusiasts. Apart from that, we are also inviting IoT and robotic
enthusiasts. And also we are looking for sales marketing and business development
executives who are able to handle this and to sell this to our clients.
JULY 2016

PAGE 5
TECH {AI}
FEATURE INTERVIEW
Interviewer: So we just had a keynote speech from Anand of Mad Street Den, obviously
where he spelt out what matters and all. So what is the vision for a company like iYantras?
Navnit: See, we set to get into this to solve the very complex problems on Earth, starting
from giving solutions to developing intelligent machines to solving the time travel, even
the immortality problem, and replacing the human consciousness for the future. I have a
vision. See, I have a few other startups. I came from the roots where I thought that the
human emotions should be stored even after death.
So my vision is basically to make you curious about technology. Technology is not right
now very conjugal to what I’m thinking. The starting of this, my end goal is to make the
human consciousness, like the replacement of the human brain so if your mother and dad
are not there even after death, or you are not there for your kids, your consciousness and
experience has been captured so it will replace you for the next generation.
Interviewer: Tell me something. Where do you draw inspiration for all this?
Navnit: See, basically as I told, inspiration is from my roots.
Interviewer: Your mentors?
Navnit: Yeah, my mentors. See, basically, there are a lot of mentors to me. There are
different mentors in technology as well as my spiritual gurus. See, my thinking is different.
It’s not to make this technology
Add
as a
a
selfish
little
person
bit of body
to reach
text
to the audience. I want to make
sure these emotions of the human, mankind, should be captured wisely for the future
generations. You need to understand one thing. Basically, the future generations will get
worse after some time. You will not have the values that we are seeing at least now.
I want to make sure the values of our families will be captured so that future generations,
when this AI is growing, there are also some dangers associated with it, so we want to build
technologies around this AI to make sure the human values are being captured. That’s an
end objective. Right now we are basically doing whatever is available and we can grow a
business out of it. Our vision is to R&D and get the human behavioral science introduced
and develop a replacement of our own consciousness.
Interviewer: Thank you Navnit for talking to us. Wish you and iYantras and your team all
the very best.
Navnit: Thank you very much.
Watch the entire interview at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoR6O3YK5fQ
JULY 2016

TECH {AI}
STARTUP SCENE
PAGE 6
Add subheading
INDIA AI STARTUPS
CHENN{AI} STARTUPS
JULY 2016

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TECH {AI}
STARTUP SCENE
CHENNAI STARTUPS
JULY 2016