Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been subject to a fair share of debates including concerns around machines overtaking, or even replacing, the human workforce. However, ground realities suggest the main concern should be the acute shortage of skills. Further, since the skillset of a data scientist needs to constantly evolve along with technology, the demand-supply gap is only growing further. In countries such as India, AI adoption is driven by the evolution of the IT infrastructure. According to the IDC Cognitive User Adoption Survey (2017), an overwhelming majority of Indian organizations (nearly 70%) — have either adopted or have plans to leverage cognitive capabilities in the next 18 months. This includes a combination of pilot and enterprise-wide deployments. Overall, industries are expected to experience more AI use cases in the near future — from digital shopping assistants in retail to carefully curated teams in sports, and factory automation systems in manufacturing.

(The Hindu)