Nepal, students and AI
The conference titled “Artificial Intelligence for Transforming Business and Society (AITB2019)”, brought together more than 100 international and national academics, industry experts, researchers, policy makers and students under one roof to share their research findings, experience, and expertise in the field of AI.
According to the AITB2019 Organizing Committee, the topic of Artificial Intelligence(AI) was chosen to discuss the relevance of AI revolution happening all over the world and in the context of Nepal. It was also intended to bring the national and international intellect to share their ideas through their research and experience in the field of AI. The initiation of discussion about the importance for Nepal to keep up with the AI revolution and to make sure that the human resources are prepared for the future skills was the main aim of the conference.
Discussion Topics
I was one of the panelist and we were asked the following questions:
- In terms of the impact of AI, how big do you think the impact will be in our lives in the future? You are free to choose your timelines here.
- How important is it to be updated about AI today? Why does everyone need to know about AI?
- How can we inspire the young generation to be part of the AI revolution? or is it the other way around? (ie. do we need to inspire the older generation, policymakers to be part of the revolution to make the progress faster?)
- From the academic perspective, do you see a need to do something radically different on how we impart knowledge now vs when AI will be prevalent?
- There is a debate about jobs when AI will really come in effect? What is your stand in this debate? will there be more jobs or fewer jobs?
- Final question, do we need to fear AI? will we be taken over by machines? or will we all be cyborgs that will be completely in sync with the machines?
The press release for the program concluded the following regarding our panel discussion.
“The second panel moderated by Mr. Amod Niroula, Co-founder and Project Manager at ACT360, brought industry practitioners, entrepreneurs and academics together to discuss the need for developing AI strategies for tomorrow. Panelist Dr Bal Krishna Bal, Head of Department, Computer Science at Kathmandu University emphasized the crucial role of academia in providing the needed talent as well as the need for adaptation and updating of curriculum. Mr. Ayush Subedi, Co-founder/CTO of Moonlit Solutions stressed the need to first increase access to disaggregated data to be able to adopt AI. Mr. Ravi Bajracharya, Co- founder of Wiseyak shared his own experiences about adopting AI in the field of healthcare for increased access to rural Nepal. Chief Technology Architect of Makura Creations, Mr. Chandan Gupta shared his views about not taking the AI revolution as a threat to jobs but instead a need to be aware of the changing nature of jobs.”