Intel India trains 99,000 people in Artificial Intelligence

 US chipmaker Intel has trained as many as 99,000 developers, students and professors in artificial intelligence (AI) in India since April 2017, against a target of 15,000 for the first year of its programme, according to the tech major.

It has also tied up with premier educational institutes like the IITs in Delhi, Mumbai, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Chennai, and IIITs in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, BITS Pilani, ISI Kolkata, IISc Bangalore, CDAC and companies like Shell and TCS among others for training under its AI developer education.

"Though we had committed to training 15,000 developers, students, and professors in AI initially through training and workshops, we have already exceeded the target over seven-fold at over 99,000 by roping in many of them from 100 organisations," said Prakash Mallya, managing director for sales and marketing, Intel India.

The programme was launched in April 2017 and the initial target was for a year ending April 2018, he said, adding the programme is aimed to democratising AI through collaborations with partners and customers.

Intel powers as much as 97 per cent of data centre servers running AI workloads at present in the world.

The company, which organised its first AI developer conference in the country last week in Bengaluru after the initiative in home market US earlier this year, had over 500 developers attending it.

It also announced collaborations with Philips India and Mphasis to deploy its AI portfolio in the local ecosystem.

Techies need to up-skill 15-20 times to achieve Career growth

Some of the most sought-after job skills include knowledge of artificial intelligence, blockchain and robotics, and techies will need to up-skill 15-20 times to achieve career growth, says a study.

According to the edu-tech platform, Edureka's Fastest Growing Tech Skills report that examined more than 16,900 responses, the race for innovation among businesses is getting reflected in the race for learning.

As per the report, the fastest-growing tech skills include artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), the blockchain, robotic process automation (RPA), cloud computing and DevOps, data science and big data.

The report noted that one skill in isolation is not enough anymore and a combination of frameworks, programming languages and tools are required of professionals in these domains.

As per the report, artificial intelligence is widely recognised as a skill that can leapfrog a technology professional's career growth. Edureka has seen more than 100 percent increase in learners for the AI course in the last 6 months.

The report said IoT is another technology of the future that did not have a dedicated job role until recently but is now one of the hottest skills to master and an IoT Developer can earn an average salary of USD 91,438 per annum.

The blockchain is revolutionising connectivity and transactions. Professionals who can develop and deploy blockchains can expect a bright career owing to the huge skill gap. The average salary of a blockchain software architect is pegged at USD 123,260 per annum.

Organisations are looking to automate large-scale iterative jobs to increase efficiency and hence the demand for robotics process automation (RPA) professionals is on a rise. At Edureka, there is a 78 percent increase in learners opting for RPA courses in the last 6 months.

Cloud computing and DevOps have seen a steady growth rate of 35 percent, while a 60 percent increase was seen in learners opting for data science training in the last 6 months at Edureka.

Artificial Intelligence will Create more Jobs in 2020 Globally

Artificial intelligence will create more jobs globally rather than eliminating jobs in 2020, with white-collar service workers in certain companies taking the biggest hit, an industry expert said.

Peter Sondergaard, executive vice-president and global head of research at Gartner, on the sidelines of the Gartner Symposium/IT Expo 2018, that firms such as legal, insurance and banking are likely to be impacted. Gartner, Inc. is an American research and advisory firm providing information technology-related insight for IT and other business leaders located across the world. Its headquarters are in Stamford, Connecticut, United States.

He said AI will create 2.3 million jobs in 2020, while only eliminating 1.8 million jobs.“When we move beyond the horizon, we will see more of blue-collar jobs getting eliminated such as transportation and trucking jobs due to autonomous vehicles. The jobs that are going to be created is to train the AI systems by inputting data and data scientists.”

According to Sondergaard, there is risk involved with AI and the first risk is the elimination of jobs; the second one is biases of software code, and the third risk is the bias of the data. Software code is developed by the mindset of the people of the developers.

“If they are young people, they will be biased. Feeding bad data it will give bad data out.”

After 2020, he said that young people are likely going to a job category that does not exist today, using skills we don’t know we need and trying to do something in a business that does not exist today.

“AI is here to help us and create new opportunities and capabilities. A person plus a machine is smarter either by themselves. AI will continue to learn and improve human decisions with lots of data. Data is the new fuel,” Sondergaard said.

He said most people are still in the dark about how to approach AI.“AI is hyped and we don’t know yet what AI will do and the full impact it will have on society and individual businesses. A major part of AI will be relatively simple but bot-based implementations over the next couple of years but there is a lot of scopes for companies to exploit AI,” Sondergaard said.

He added that AI will not probably take off in a big way until 2030. What AI is affecting today is the user experience, processes and analytics in banks, insurance companies and cybersecurity companies. There is a shortage of talent for skilled workers such as data engineer or scientist, but he said the region is capable of importing talent.

“Organisations that are not creating new digital business models, or new ways to engage constituents or customers, will begin to lag. Vendors that do not move more quickly than their clients will be left behind.”

He said there are three barriers to digital transformation in existing companies: culture, resources and talent.

“Culture is one of the slowest things to change. It is hard to change the way people think, so you need to change what the people do instead. Once they do things differently, it shifts the way they think. This shows that digital transformation is the first and foremost a business transformation. People, not technology, is the most important piece in the digital transformation puzzle,” he said.

Google, Facebook Target Paris as a Center for AI Expansion

Paris is gaining ground as a European hub for artificial intelligence research as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. pledge to hire staff and invest in labs after their top executives met with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Google said it will create an AI lab dedicated to fundamental research on themes like automatic learning, language and a computer’s ability to see, with the aim of applying findings to fields from health to the environment. The end-goal is to grow this group to a size similar to Google’s existing team of 120 engineers who do applied research in Paris, working on developments for Chrome and YouTube, a company spokeswoman said.

Facebook, which already has an artificial intelligence lab in Paris, said it will double the team there to 100 people by 2022 and spend 10 million euros ($12.2 million) on items including hardware equipment. Both announcements came as part of a broader series of promises by these companies to increase budgets in France, with Google and Facebook also separately vowing to train citizens on digital tools.

“France has all the assets to succeed. It has top engineers, great entrepreneurs, one of the best education systems in the world, great infrastructure, and successful global companies,” Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai wrote in a blog post. He reaffirmed a broader hiring target to reach 1,000 employees at Google’s headquarters in the French capital, from 700 today.

Pichai and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg are guests of Macron’s on Monday, among 140 top executives from a variety of industries. In Versailles, company chiefs were invited to attend presentations by ministers, as well as private meetings and dinner with the president -- a full-fledged investor roadshow meant to convince CEOs to invest more in France, as they prepare to head to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum.

SAP SE CEO Bill McDermott is also on the guest list. Europe’s biggest software company said it will invest 2 billion euros over five years in France on research and development, as well as backing and acquiring startups.

SAP also announced Monday it’s buying a French company called Recast.AI that specializes in artificial intelligence. Recast.AI, which develops conversational chatbots, will be part of SAP’s efforts to add voice recognition to its products.

Macron’s strategy to woo investors and bring more funds to the French ecosystem dates back before his days as president, and tech has always been at the core of it. When he was still economy minister two years ago, Macron used the grandeur of Versailles to try and convince technology-focused venture-capitalists, including Andreessen Horowitz and Accel Partners, that France is a good place for their money.

The French president has also expressed the goal of establishing France and Europe as leaders in global artificial intelligence innovation, to rival the U.S. and China. France is waiting for a report by a member of Parliament, Cedric Villani, expected soon before it unveils a national strategy on AI.

Still, Macron has toughened his stance on technology companies in recent months on issues like taxes. He brought it up with Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook during a meeting at the French presidential palace in September.

Taxation of tech companies will be part of talks in Versailles Monday, but they’re not the reason for Macron’s meetings with Pichai, Sandberg and others, according to an official at the president’s office.

The dinner will be held at the Gallery of Great Battles in the Versailles Palace, where Macron hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin last year. Catering will include meals imagined by Michelin-starred chef Alain Ducasse.