New Delhi: Over the last 25 years, the IBM India research labs (often referred to as IRL) have contributed to some of the biggest moments in IBM’s technology journey. IRL today has emerged as one of the leaders in the AI space and has played a pioneering role in developing trusted and fair AI, says Amith Singhee, director, IBM Research India & CTO, IBM India South Asia. “Beyond AI, the labs have been carrying out pioneering work in blockchain research,” he tells in an interview.
AI capabilities from IBM Research are deployed into IBM Watson products enabling businesses to automate and simplify tasks, converse using everyday language and ensure trust and confidence in outcomes. Our innovative work in conversational AI systems is powering IBM Watson Assistant. IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps which uses AI to simplify IT operations and automate problem resolution in a hybrid cloud environment has been developed on our AI for IT automation technology.
We are also scaling AI with foundation models and Generative AI for more applications across Code, IT, time series and geospatial data. We are committed to growing and scaling the innovation ecosystem in India through our academic partnerships (with IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, and IISc Bangalore, among others).
IRL is nurturing the quantum computing ecosystem in India through our skilling initiatives and expanding our Quantum Network to make quantum real for India. We are working with IIT Madras to explore practical applications in the areas of finance and chemistry. Indian startup BosonQ Psi is exploring quantum applications in aerospace, automotive, manufacturing and biotech, etc.
What are the breakthrough innovations that have come out so far?
Our innovations are focused on addressing key challenges faced by businesses and society using the power of technology. IRL developed “Spoken web” technology to power the first network of voice sites that could be accessed on low-cost mobile devices by even people without any IT skills. A suite of AI capabilities that we built for the fashion retail industry for visual commerce and intelligent retail supply chains, ensured that the right product reached the right location at the right time and the right price. These groundbreaking AI capabilities were adopted by multiple clients such as Bestseller India and Emerald Jewellers.
In the trusted AI space, the lab played a pioneering role in the development of AI Fairness 360, an open-source software toolkit that can help detect and remove bias in machine learning models. IRL’s work in the sustainability space has led to the release of a Carbon Performance Engine that helps organisations to identify and monitor carbon emission hotspots throughout their supply chain, using AI and geospatial analytic models.
What types of applications do you see generative AI produce for enterprises?
IBM is developing foundation models for generative AI that are trustworthy, scalable, and easily accessible across public and private clouds. We are training these models on multiple types of business data, including code, time series data, tabular data, geospatial data, and IT events data. With generative AI, enterprises can build innovative applications that create value for their customers or employees, enhancing experience and productivity. Other broad applications could be a summarisation of call centre interactions, financial reports, creating marketing copy, generation and modernisation of source code, etc. You can even use it to “generate” new ideas for novel drugs and other chemicals of interest.
What’s next on the research agenda?
Today, businesses need access to a full technology stack that enables them to train, tune and deploy AI — including foundation models —across their organisation with their trusted data, at speed, with guardrails — all in one place and across any cloud environment. That’s why IBM launched IBM Watsonx, a new data and AI platform that integrates IBM’s AI offerings and adds the power of foundation models specifically designed for the complex requirements of businesses.
In quantum computing, IBM plans to release a 1,121-qubit processor later this year, as a result, the Indian ecosystem will continue to access the advancements that IBM makes globally in quantum computing. The approval of the National Quantum Mission will further boost the growing interest in this technology and IBM will continue its efforts on skilling, research, and building the quantum ecosystem in India.
