Technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, IoT and Robotics are no longer exclusive to the purview of research labs or capital-intensive manufacturing environment. Increasingly, tools and knowledge based on the ideas in these domains are becoming commonplace and fundamentally transforming our lives, the nature of our work, our thinking and our work schedules as well. The sharing economy based on these technologies, pioneered by companies like AirBnB and Uber, has opened up a whole host of options for us as producers and consumers.

How is the landscape changing within these domains of knowledge? How are they enhancing our understanding of ourselves, our society and the different environments we function in? How is technology impacting us as individuals, our workplaces and society as a whole?

At the same time as new solutions and technologies are harnessed to relieve our pain points, we are facing a different set of challenges arising out of these applications.

Panelists, Subrata Das, President and Chief Scientist, Machine Analytics, Suchit Jain, VP Strategy & Community, Dassault Systemes Solidworks Corporation, Ashish Nadkarni, Program Director, Enterprise Servers and Storage, International Data Corporation and Stephen O’Dea, Senior Program Manager, Remote Presence, iRobot Corporation explored this topic in depth. 

Technical details on a variety of topics related to the theme were presented. There was a spirited discussion on singularity – which defines a time when the intelligence of a machine would be higher than that of humans.  Das did not quite believe that such a thing would happen within our lifetime. 

There was general consensus that perhaps the hardware capacity would grow much faster than the algorithm development and hence the use of the hardware to its full potential may be an issue. 

It was clear that the world has changed significantly and smart homes and smart cities were already a significant part of our lives and we can look forward to a very interesting future.