If data is the new oil, then Intel is trying to be the biggest refinery of it.
It’s no more a secret that Artificial intelligence has arrived to transform our lives forever. A few days back we dug deep to understand the possible impact of artificial intelligence in our professional and personal life.
However, it’s just the dawn of AI, and all the tech giants have set their eyes on the next wave of technological revolution. Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTL) is leaving no stone unturned to embrace the big opportunity, estimated to be as big as $19.47 billion by 2022. To grab a sizable share of the global AI market, Intel has started focusing on the adoption of AI in emerging countries, including India and China.
Improved productivity, diversified application areas, increased customer satisfaction, and big data integration are the key factors behind the growth of artificial intelligence market. But there is one aspect that could restrain the growth – lack of skilled workforce in the artificial intelligence sector. Considering the promising past performance in creating technological skill sets, all eyes are on India to overcome the challenge in the artificial intelligence space. Apparently, Intel has quickly realised the benefits of fixing it!
Today, in Bangalore, Intel India hosted its first AI Day. Besides being focused on bringing together all the major stakeholders including government industry and academia, the company has taken a much-needed initiative to kill the greatest fear – the absence of skilled workspace.
As a stepping stone to bring AI revolution in the country, Intel India has announced an educational program for the country’s developer community. Under the program, the company would train 15,000 professionals, who would play a key role to push the envelope in the AI space. These trained professionals, which include scientists, developers, analysts and engineers, would have exposure to emerging AI technologies, including Deep Learning and Machine Learning.
Intel India has also planned to do 60 programs across the year to boost the adoption and exposure of Artifical Intelligence in selected professionals. Roadshows, workshops and roundtable seminars would be the primary methods to empowering these professionals with the required set of AI technologies.
“Our collaboration with the industry and the academia will help democratise AI, by reducing entry barriers for developers, data scientists and students. In India, we are targeting the BFSI, telecom, and e-commerce sectors, across High Performance Computing (HPC), big data, and Internet of Things, all of which are complementary to AI”, says Parkash Mallya, Managing Director – Intel South Asia.
The explosive adoption of Artifical Intelligence can be understood by the fact that AI is the fastest growing workload in the data centre. As companies are accumulating greatest amount of data than ever before, data centres are witnessing huge demand for servers running on data analytics. By 2020, it’s estimated that data centres would have more servers running data analytics than any other workload.
97% of data centres, running AI workloads, are powered by Intel. It provides a huge advantage to Intel over other players in the AI industry.
It is estimated that by nearly 5.1 million jobs would be lost by 2021 due to the advent of artificial intelligence, albeit thought leaders of the industry see no sign to panic.
“The only jobs that would disappear are the ones which are predictive and standrad process driven. Humans don’t need to act as routers; they will have more important tasks in hand to execute. thanks to the emergence of Artifical Intelligence”, says Pradeep Dubey, Director of Paralllel Computing Lab, Intel Labs.
Intel is also working to create more affordable and adoptable ecosystem of artificial intelligence for organisations. The company has set up a cross-Intel organisation – the Artifical Intelligence Products Group (AIPG) – which is meant to set the standards for AI and rally the industry around it.
At this point, Intel has got a clear edge over other companies in AI space. But considering AI has just scratched the surface, it would be interesting to see how much Intel could hold on its plate when the artificial intelligence revenue would reach $36.8 billion by 2025.
