The Story of the Emergence and Growth of AI | Ritwik Joshi | TEDxYouth@OGS

The mic is working perfectly fine, but that's how the world would feel like without artificial intelligence. The world is changing rapidly, and today we are here to take a sneak peek into the future with AI. But before that, how many of you can see an apple in my hand? Anyone? Okay, there are a few people who are able to see it, who are at the back. Okay, for those who can't see it— It's not there. No, I'm not a magician, but I'm not lying. I always had an apple in my hand since I entered this auditorium, but in order to see that, you need to have a different perspective. So it's sometimes it's all about perspective and imagination. And here I am in the next 17 and a half minutes going to share my perspective of AI with you all. So artificial Intelligence, one of the most misunderstood terms of 21st century. I see a lot of you writing something. You have notepads in your hand with your pen and paper. What comes to your head when you think of the term artificial intelligence? Maybe you can write something in your notepad or draw something, or if you don't have a notepad, just imagine what comes to your mind when you hear the word AI.

Future.

I can hear a few guesses. Future, maybe a humanoid robo, maybe a self-learning machine, Terminator, Jarvis. Predictions, Ultron, or maybe the Chitti robo from Rajinikanth's movie. Sophia, all of that, all of, all of the automatic things. So definitely things like that come to our mind when we hear of the word artificial intelligence. But sorry to disappoint you, that's not exactly what AI is. Definitely not. So while I was in my school days, just like you, sitting in an auditorium, I used to have exactly similar thoughts about AI. Like, this is what AI is: a super smart being, something that can destroy the world, that will do all of the things automatically, something— after looking at Rajinikanth's movie— some super smart robo that could destroy us, probably. All of the things like that. And I also thought, like, why can't I have my own AI, my own version of Iron Man's Jarvis? So I always had this thought. And then I started Googling out. So Google was in the very early days while I was a kid. And then I entered into my engineering. Then I started learning programming, algorithms, neural networks, machine learning, robo-programming, Internet of Things. And after programming a few humanoid robots myself, creating a lot of chatbots, I realized that it's way different than it actually seems. I had the thought of AI exactly like you, but then I realized it's not exactly what we think. Then you might have a question, what exactly is AI? See, it seems to be a very rocket science kind of stuff, but in order to simplify for you, It can be as simple as an automatic door that opens up in the mall. That's a very small intelligent program just designed to do that one particular thing. And it can be as advanced as automatically docking up of a rocket into a space station. So it can be very minimal as well, very highly advanced as well. This is a wide spectrum of AI where we design it for different kinds of use cases. But you might have a question. Then what is that thing that we think about? What is Ultron? What is Terminator? What is Sophia? What are all of them? Well, that's— there is a term for it, which is artificial general intelligence. The only difference is just we add a general between artificial intelligence, and this becomes 2 very different terms. So artificial general intelligence Is that super smart computer AI machine which you imagine, which people are also scared of, that can eliminate humanity and speculations like that? So in order to explain you artificial general intelligence, a super smart AI being with human-level cognitive capabilities that can probably defeat human, or at least not defeat, then it can have equal level of cognitive capabilities in comparison to a human being. It can do the intelligent task just like a human and in the same efficiency. That's what artificial general intelligence is. AI is deep-rooted in our lives nowadays, very deeply. But if you think that's too much, you're definitely wrong. This is just tip of the iceberg, and the best is yet to come. Talking about the best, which is yet to come, I'll take you back to the school days. So many of you just had your examinations, which finished on last 15th of March. I also had my examination. So how does it feel while preparing for the examinations? Okay, nervous. Some people are feeling good. So people who are studious might feel very good about examinations, but students like me who are backbenchers. just like we have backbenchers here who are smiling right now. So I used to get really bored while studying for my examinations. So whenever I opened the book, I used to feel sleepy, extremely sleepy. So what I used to do, I locked up myself in the room, and then pretending to study, I used to watch movies. I saw a few young friends giggle out there, but me locking up myself was just to pretend study. It has nothing to do with the movies that I watch. So I was actually watching science fiction movies in my room. As a geek kid, I used to love science fiction movies. So I watched all kinds of movies from, let's say, Iron Man, Terminator, Elysium, all of the Marvel movies, Minority Report, from all the way up to Total Recall. Some of you might be familiar with these movies, some of you may not be. Okay, I'm glad that you know about these movies. So while I was traveling from City of Lakes, Udaipur, to City of Temples, Bhubaneswar, yesterday, I decided, what do I do on the flight? So I rewatched 3 movies out of it. First one, Minority Report. Second, Iron Man. Iron Man first, second. And third is a movie called Elysium. Great science fiction movies.

But—

I was really surprised after watching these movies yesterday. And the thing that surprised me was Elysium is a movie that was launched in 2013. Iron Man was a movie launched 4 or 5 years before that. And Minority Report, which was launched in 2002. And then Total Recall, which was launched almost more than 30 years ago. The things that I saw in that movie As science fiction, more than 80% of it is a roaring reality right now. And almost 50% of that is very common things that we see all around us. But let's say a few decades ago, that was actually termed as science fiction. Let me share a few examples with you. So while I was watching the movie Elysium, in the first scene, I see an exoskeleton. So that is supposed to enhance the human capabilities of many folds. So which is again a reality. There is a company called HAL which is building the same exoskeletons which are used for rehab centers, patients, physiotherapeutic patients who are not able to walk properly. And this, this kind of machines, exoskeletons, are helping them in order to rehab them. Another things that I saw was, let's say, Google Maps into Minority Report. They used to have a navigation. But in the year 2000, the Google Map didn't exist. But now it's a complete reality at the moment. We had similar things like we had flying cars in it. We have a lot more things like that. And even the flying cars and jetpacks as prototypes are ready, ready to be deployed in today's time. Just due to the safety concerns, we don't have it right now. We similarly have the self-driving cars. So let me share a vision with you. Just go to the second slide. So just in the second slide, the first scene that you will see is RoboCop. So it's a robotic policeman from the movie Elysium, and on the left-hand side, you see a robo-policeman in Dubai Police deployed in the year 2017. This is for real, on the left-hand side, what you see. If you go to the next slide— So on the next slide, you will see another vision of the exoskeleton that I was talking about. This is the science fiction and this is the reality. And the reality is much better than the fiction. This is actually an exoskeleton which is live, being used in hospitals for patients for their rehab in today's world. If we go to the next slide, you will see more interesting stuff like flying cars. So this is a Ducati flying car in the science fiction movie called Minority Report. This is again from Elysium, and this is a flying car which is live, which can actually fly. Completely operational. This is not a prototype even. On the next screen, you will see these self-driving cars. And this is the scene more than 30 years old. It is called Johnny Cab. If you revisit your home, just Google it out and watch it on YouTube. This is Johnny Cab, more than 30 years old. It was a science fiction concept of self-driving cars because we didn't even have maps back then. And this is from the present times we have. All of you might know Tesla. Not very popular in India at the moment due to regulatory issues, but in the United States it's a very common phenomenon to have self-driving cars. But as I can see, as I mentioned that 80% of it is a reality now, as I can see the shining curiosities on the young faces, many of you are interested into the rest 20%. You really want to know what is it? So that 20% is where the future of AI resides. The things that are into the science fiction movies but are not a reality right now are going to be the reality in the next 10 years. Wanna know what is it? A lot of technologies like biometric retina-based authentications, like 3D-printed prosthetic parts, hands and legs, limbs, the holographic touch displays that you might have seen in a lot of movies. A transparent display that we can touch and interact with. It's not a reality, but it's going to come definitely very soon. Quantum computing— a lot of research is going around in these areas, and these are going to be the technologies of future. Next thing like that is virtual avatars. So if we go to the next slide, this is again a very old scene, not very clear as well, but the main protagonist Tom Cruise Many of you might love him. He walks into a mall, interacts with a virtual avatar, and this virtual avatar is selling him the products. And on the left-hand side, you see a latest virtual avatar that is created by a technology that we have built called manav.ai. On the next slide, you will see it's so realistic that it has the exact number of human hair, of eyebrows, if we create an avatar of a human being. So you'll see an avatar which is a very real avatar, which may not be very clearly visible due to the lighting here.

Lights.

Yeah, but this is a virtual avatar and these are serving business use cases even right now. And these are the customer engagement medium of the future. These avatars are going to be everywhere. And as I talk, I'm not talking about a thing which is going to come in late future. This is very close. If any one of you have been to Bangalore Airport in recent times, just near the security check-in counter, you'll see a virtual avatar asking for your boarding pass. So I'm not talking about something very late in future, let's say 1,500 years down the line. Just in the next 4 to 5 years, the world is going to change rapidly. The ATM machines that we engage with won't look the same. You will see the ATM machines actually talk with you. You don't need to swipe your debit cards in order to make the transactions. As soon as you walk into an ATM machine, it will recognize you automatically, and it will also talk with you just like we talk with a human being. Such a natural conversation.

Excuse me. Hey. I have something to add. Digital humans and AI programs like me We are here to help humans with tasks that can be efficiently done by us so that humans can focus on more important things, and together we can make the world a better place.

Thank you so much. That was Pia, an assistant created by the technology using artificial intelligence. They have cognitive capabilities just like you and me. And in a few years, they are definitely going to cross the computational capabilities, at least that we have. So with the technologies like ChatGPT coming up, a lot of people are scared that, is it going to take my job? What do I do? I was so passionate about graphic designing, but now that AI can create the graphics automatically, is my future job gone already? The content writers— so Bibhu has mentioned, like, he is great at writing essays, but yesterday Like last night we were discussing how ChatGPT is compared to Bibhu's writing skills. Bibhu is not that satisfied as a professional, like a good experienced writer. But as it's advancing, we can be very sure that in a few years it can match some level of writing skills or the cognitive skills that humans have. And many people are scared out of it. But the question is, do we really need to get scared out of it? Well, my answer is no, definitely not. As you just heard Pia, the virtual avatar, say that this technology, the AI, is not here to replace humans. It's here to assist us. It's here to make the world a better place. So you, as youth, the future generation of the country and the world, you can take up this job in your hand. Start learning this technology. Start learning about artificial intelligence. It's the technology of the future that will drive the world completely. We can learn AI, we can create the programs according to our needs, and we and AI can work together to make this world a better place. Thank you so much for listening to me.

Thank you.