Assistant Professor

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Indian Institute of Information Technology Kota, India

A Short Biography

Dr. Basant Agarwal is working as an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Information Technology Kota (IIIT-Kota), India, which is an Institute of National Importance. He holds a Ph.D. and M.Tech. from Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur, India. He has more than 9 years of experience in research and teaching. He has worked as a Postdoc Research Fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway, under the prestigious ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) fellowship in 2016. He has also worked as a Research Scientist at Temasek Laboratories, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore. He is working on several sponsored research project in the field of artificial intelligence, machine learning which has direct impact on the society. He has published more than 50 research papers in journals of repute. His research interest is in Artificial Intelligence, Text mining, Natural Language Processing, Machine learning, Deep learning, Intelligent Systems and related areas. 

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The topic and presentation abstract

The role of artificial intelligence for the sustainable business in the Post COVID-19 world 

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has undeniably influenced the global economy and environment. When it started, companies used a wide array of techniques and solutions to mitigate the damages. One solution that helped these companies the most was Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI touches almost every aspect of our everyday lives and is continuously playing a key role in the rapidly evolving world. AI has already been introduced across different sectors including mobility, education, manufacturing, e-commerce, communication, health, insurance, finance and many more. It plays a key role in technical development of the health field ranging from the autonomous surgical robots, robotic nursing assistants, and automated imaging diagnostics. Moreover, in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, AI offered several opportunities to analyze huge amount of available data for developing various lifesaving breakthrough applications such as developing vaccines within record time, implementing contact-tracing, and analyzing the patterns of spreading of the coronavirus, which helped in curbing the spread of the pandemic. AI-based robots and drones considerably helped in delivery of healthcare systems. AI is also a tool for finding quick ways to bring cures to market, assisting customers in stores, adjusting to new inputs, performing human-like tasks, and enabling the achievement of 134 targets across all 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN). According to the consulting firm PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), the second-largest professional services network globally, AI could boost global GDP by 14% by 2030, which is equivalent to additional 15.7 Trillion dollars. Thus, this makes AI – “the biggest commercial opportunity” in today’s rapidly changing economy. 

The importance of AI and Machine Learning leads us to believe that governments must foster trust in these technologies in order to address future health issues and accomplish the SDGs related to good health and wellbeing. Employers have more reason than ever to hunt for methods to substitute workers with robots, and recent evidence suggests that the same is happening at a rapid rate. The emergence of AI and its increasingly broad impact across various sectors necessitates a review of its impact on achieving the SDGs. According to a new survey “AI in a Post-COVID-19 World” released by The AI Journal, 72 percent of CEOs are optimistic about the role of AI in the future, with the top expectation being that it will improve business operations by up to 74 percent. Also, 55 percent CEOs believe that AI will aid in the development of new business models, and 54 percent believe that AI will enable the development of new products and services. As organizations become more reliant on AI-based systems, the Explainable Sustainable AI was born out of the necessity for deployment of sustainable AI solutions reinforced with human-understandable explanations. 

In this talk, I will be presenting how AI can contribute to achieving SDGs, why AI matters for sustainable businesses and what’s the real value of AI for a business, how businesses are adopting AI technologies, although AI has already been around in the past, why today is the right time to use AI for growth of businesses, and finally, how we can utilize AI for a business.