 "Some in top flight, some lose speed")
If Infosys had its own Artificial Intelligence, its Mysuru campus would not have had to be evacuated when a chiller broke down, said its chief executive officer, Vishal Sikka. The company's knowledge-based AI platform Mana would have been able to predict impending HVAC problem at least a week in advance. Sikka, who has a PhD in AI from Stanford, and has spent a summer in Intel working on AI in manufacturing, says it is the future of the services industry.
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Service for airplane or power systems, for example, can run into hundred-year contracts, and multiple generations of maintenance, making AI and predictive tools invaluable.
"AI in enterprise can bring software to help amplify the life of an engineer, and increase margins, especially for a service company like Infosys," said Sikka, but he warns innovation has to be pervasive - not just setting up labs and hiring 30 smart people. Would this lead to job loss? Sikka disagreed. "Unemployment was worse in the era of horse and carts than now," he said.
