The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) has skyrocketed, including in response to the global pandemic and its challenges. From enabling efficient telemedicine networks to empowering cutting-edge industrial research, AI has already made an indelible impact on human society. However, in many ways, it is only getting started. In the last five years, AI-based visual intelligence has rapidly taken center stage in the tech world.
With visual intelligence, machines now add greater value to society since they identify and interpret visual data and are able to leverage this for problem solving, with actionable intelligence and are gaining ground in areas such as autonomous vehicles operations and quality control in manufacturing to name a few.
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Solving complex problem
“By enabling machines to recreate a uniquely human capability of “seeing” and “understanding” – we’re fast stepping into a world where we can finally take on complex problems at scale,” says Sachin Gaur, NORA.ai, “Just imagine being able to apply the best of human cognition, machine speed, and digital precision to solving global problems – from climate change to sustainable manufacturing. There is simply no limit.”
Vision AI has been successfully adopted by many key industries that directly impact human society. As an example, it’s been a major value add in agriculture, in soil evaluation, livestock management, crop monitoring, where these capabilities cumulatively help agri-businesses make more sustainable decisions in their industry operations and significantly mitigate adverse environmental impact and brave climate change. With industry investment expected to reach USD 48.6 billion by the end of 2022, we’ve only just begun to realize its enormous potential.
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We know that with the right investment and commitment, visually intelligent solutions can radically change the approach towards solving complex problems. Google has just made more than USD 1billion investment in DeepMind and its applications for solving previously impossible challenges like predicting structure of nearly every protein known to science, developing Malaria vaccines and even system engineering enzymes to fight plastic pollution. Similarly, researchers at Tulane University developed an amazing solution that analyzes tissue imagery to detect and diagnose colorectal cancer, better and faster than a human pathologist.
Driving commitment to innovate
Given how AI-use has made solutioning effective, there are still many obstacles to research and resolve. And it’s only with an ultimate commitment, that societally impactful industries can target major problems and accelerate society with next-generation solutions in healthcare, environment, climate, and sustainability.
Innovations in AI-centric hardware and development of cutting-edge AI capable CPU and GPU microarchitectures have fueled the engine of growth – from Google’s proprietary Tensor Processing Unit ASIC chips to NVIDIA’s upcoming Hopper chip development platform. Combining it with significant academic research, falling hardware costs and affordable prototyping, visual intelligence is now versatile and more accessible.
Within a few years, we could leverage its potential well beyond any traditional use case by driving it towards helping human society become better equipped, informed, and prepared to address fundamental global challenges. In fact, visual intelligence may be the silver bullet that helps accelerate the potential of human society and enable the creation of a more resilient future.
