They say the journey is as important as the destination, but after sitting in a kilometre-long jam at Bhairav Marg, I beg to differ! I finally managed a smooth entry through Gate 4 of the India AI Impact Summit, just as the venue was buzzing with anticipation for the Hon’ble PM’s evening visit.
I spent the morning wandering through Hall 14, where nations were flexing their AI prowess. The Germans, true to form, had the most meticulously numbered booths I’ve ever seen (starting at 14.4, naturally). A personal highlight was the Indian Navy’s demonstration amd the Gyan Bharatam mission is a superb example of technology with purpose. (Side note: a facial recognition demo told me I look like Acharya Chanakya. I’m still deciding if I should take that as a compliment or if the model needs more training!)
The Heart of the Matter: Bharat Mandapam
Despite the massive crowds and the packed food courts, the eager queues at every session room proved one thing: India is hungry for Knowledge and AI.
The sessions provided some much-needed grounding for the AI hype. The panel on Healthcare AI was particularly eye-opening. We often get caught up in the “magic” of LLMs, but the experts brought us back to reality with three core pillars:
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Practical Playbooks: Shifting from “theoretical ethics” to 8 actionable tenets that guide the entire AI lifecycle.
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Inclusive Co-Design: The phrase “Nothing About Us Without Us” hit home. At TechnoMedix, we live by the “For Doctors, By Doctors” philosophy. Building for an ASHA worker in a rural setting is vastly different from building for a city hospital. If the end-user isn’t involved in the co-design, the tool is essentially “shelfware.”
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Strategic Restraint: Just because we can use AI doesn’t mean we should. Hearing experts at an AI conference say “AI isn’t always the answer” was the most honest moment of the day.
Message for the Day Dr. Kritikha Rangarajan (AIIMS Delhi) summed up the challenge of the “overstretched provider.” Our goal as developers shouldn’t be to create a shiny new tool that requires a week of training. We need to make AI “so easy to adopt that it is stupid to do it without it.” If we aren’t solving a burden, we are the burden.
Note to self: My pass did not read ‘Delegate’. It said ‘Industry’. Although TMX is the M of MSME, project-by-project, with my Partner and Co-Founder – Dr. Kruti Dhirwani, over the years, we have made it so far. Now it’s all the more exciting to see what the future holds and where we go from here. Couldn’t have been possible without the support and encouragement of so many well-wishers over the years.
