July 16, 2023: Artificial Intelligence Appreciation Day is celebrated on July 16 each year.
With discoveries in science, tech, and healthcare, A.I. offers the possibility of a more evolved future. A.I. tools already dominate the market making human life much easier. From travel and navigation to smartphone apps, A.I. has taken the world by storm and looks set to change the future.
Although many believe that A.I. only emerged in recent years, its foundations reach back further than that. Artificial Intelligence Appreciation Day was created to celebrate the history and accomplishments of A.I. tech and raise awareness about its current and future use cases in human life. 
Key events:
-The first recognized A.I. is created in McCulloch and Pitts' formal design for the Turing-complete artificial neurons. ( 1943)
-The field of A.I. research is born in a Dartmouth College workshop in 1956.
-The A.I. market climbed to over a billion dollars by 1985.
-By 2015, over 2,700 software projects integrated some form of A.I. within Google.
-2023:  Generative  AI advances like ChatGPT, makeAI tools available tomillions of  lay consumers

Here are some thoughts on AI Appreciation Day from leaders of industry and academia, in no particular order:
Ram Singampalli, Chief Delivery Officer, Emids: “As AI takes center stage globally, it stands at the precipice of revolutionizing our society, propelling us forward with unparalleled social and economic growth while opening new avenues of existence. Its impact is set to surpass even that of the internet, permeating every aspect of our lives and reaching every individual. With responsible and equitable application, AI has the potential to lead humanity into a new era of progress.
The advent of Generative AI promises transformative changes across various industries and disciplines, empowering individuals, and businesses alike to create and access, sparking a wave of productivity enhancements. It will also play a pivotal role in transforming healthcare, offering immense opportunities to improve patient outcomes, enhance diagnostic accuracy, and streamline medical processes. By striking a balance between technological advancements and human expertise, AI can usher a new era in healthcare delivery, making it more efficient, accurate, and patient-centered. In future, healthcare services will be more affordable and accessible based on advances brought by AI.
As AI evolves rapidly, navigating its power requires careful consideration. Yet, it is undeniable that future generations will marvel at how we once lived without the transformative capabilities of AI. Responsible adoption, with a focus on fairness and ethics, will be key to unlocking its full potential and ensuring that its benefits are accessible to all.
The widespread adoption of AI, including Generative AI, will drive unprecedented advancements, reshape industries, and solve complex challenges. This exciting journey combines human ingenuity with artificial intelligence to co-create a future beyond imagination. Together, we can shape this AI-powered world, paving the way for progress, prosperity, and a brighter future for generations to come
Raja Poladi, Head of India Development Center, SpringML, Inc:"AI is the gateway for a brighter future that would impact every aspect of human endeavor to build a better world. We can see a clear example of this with SpringML’s pothole detection project for the City of Memphis. We worked closely with them to not only identify 75% more potholes but also reduce city claim costs for damage due to unaddressed potholes, resulting in significant savings for the city. This also helped Memphis create safer neighborhoods that will be more attractive to businesses and home buyers.
PwC UK and Microsoft predict that by 2030, the use of AI for sustainable technologies could add up to USD $5.2 trillion to the world economy. AI is significantly changing every industry and I believe we are just getting started." 
Michael P. Morris, Co-Founder, Torc: “In the ecosystem of software development, the adoption of workplace AI is already having a positive effect on daily operations, but its impact on recruitment, productivity and talent management hasn't yet come close to being realized. Finding ways for AI to enhance hiring and worker experience, as well as reward culture and performance gains, will translate directly to better future of work environments and bottom-line returns. Adding intelligent technologies is about augmenting human resources and providing greater opportunities to innovate. AI's promise is not about replacing people and eliminating jobs -- AI complements and speeds a person's capabilities and communication mediums to efficiently and cost-effectively improve worker and customer experience, the products created, and ultimately higher satisfaction for an entire talent network.” 
Karthikeyan Sridossan, Executive Vice President – Strategy & Growth, Indium Software: "In the era of exponential growth driven by transformative technologies, AI has emerged as an indispensable ally for businesses. With the rapid growth of Generative AIs such as ChatGPT, Bard, DeepMind, etc., businesses are ready to harness the true potential of AI, which is believed to transcend boundaries and ride the future waves of disruption. Coupled with a modern data stack and traditional NLP engines for pre-processing, governed by Responsible AI principles, Generative AI can unleash limitless possibilities driving enterprise agenda through technology. Witnessing the evolving trend of customers across industries experimenting several business use cases in this space, it is evident that “the future is already here”. 
Chaitanya Chokkareddy, Chief Product Officer, Ozonetel: “Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed numerous aspects of our daily lives and is profoundly impacting the way businesses operate. With the release of ChatGPT and the transformative leap in large language models, enterprises are accelerating their plans to modernize customer experience (CX). Leaders within the CX domain will harness AI to analyze customer data, personalize interactions, and deepen customer engagement across various touchpoints. In contact centers, AI is automating routine tasks, augmenting human capabilities, and transforming the agent experience. AI-based tools such as speech analytics help brands uncover customer pain points and proactively resolve issues before they escalate.  
Generative AI will make it possible for firms to respond faster to a wider range of user requests. It will also enable them to efficiently run targeted conversational marketing, sales, and customer service campaigns. This is just the beginning. Brands must build their roadmaps, planning how they will leverage AI to its full potential, so they can strategically deliver value to customers and create better experiences for them”
Manish Gupta, Vice President, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell Technologies India: “The adoption rate of AI in India has been growing consistently, especially in sectors like healthcare, retail, BFSI, manufacturing, and e-commerce. The Dell Technologies 2023 Innovation Index report stated that 59% of Indian businesses are currently investing or exploring the feasibility of investing in AI, Machine Learning and advanced analytics to advance innovation for their growth. AI has been simplifying crucial business processes and helping enterprises boost their analytics, strengthen the value chain, and make business processes cost-effective while improving customer experience. For any business with a digital-first approach, AI has become a key component of their growth roadmap. This underlines the need for developing a sound AI strategy—moving from AI-possible to AI-proven—encompassing technology, people, and processes. With automation and security, AI has the capability to accelerate digital transformation enabling faster time-to-market, improved customer experiences, and an unmatched efficiency. 
The successful adoption of AI requires a robust IT infrastructure, network architecture, and data framework which can support the development and deployment of AI models at scale. AI automation and operation platforms will solve business problems and run projects from conception to production. According to the Dell Technologies 2023 Innovation Index report, 62% of organizations plan to increase spending on AI, including people, processes, and technology. By overcoming challenges and following best practices such as identifying objectives, choosing the right AI tools, and analysing the performance, organizations can develop an AI strategy that delivers real business value while mitigating risks and ensuring ethical use of the technology.
With the emergence of Generative AI, new business opportunities will be open for exploration to help with higher-level of decision-making. This will allow us to effectively reach more customers, and provide better outcomes at the workplace, along with a profound potential to automate complex processes, improve customer interactions and unlock new possibilities with better machine intelligence.”
Ritesh Chopra, Director Sales and Field Marketing, India & SAARC Countries, Norton. “AI can be both a method for carrying out cyberattacks as well as a way to protect against them. With the expansion of tools such as ChatGPT, attackers can more easily generate human-like text to carry out their social engineering attacks, which rely on tricking someone into giving up confidential information. By playing on people’s emotions and natural tendency to trust, social engineers are able to manipulate people into divulging sensitive information like passwords and bank account details. With ever growing frequency and sophistication of attacks, it grows harder for people to distinguish between legitimate and malicious communications. At Norton, we are innovating to help protect people from these ever-evolving threats, both through our products and services as well as by educating people about scams.”
Lokesh Nigam, Co-founder and Director, Kognoz. “Artificial intelligence is an expansive field with profound implications, especially in human resource management. HR departments increasingly rely on AI to inform decisions related to hiring, employee development, and retention. On this AI Appreciation Day, Kognoz celebrates the transformative impact of AI in talent acquisition. By harnessing cutting-edge conversational intelligence, we have revolutionized traditional hiring methods. Our platform empowers client companies, delivering unmatched efficiency, cost savings, and a competitive advantage. With advanced AI capabilities, we provide a leading-edge solution that optimizes the hiring process and outperforms competitors. Let's honor the incredible potential of AI to revolutionize talent acquisition and unlock boundless opportunities for organizations worldwide.”
Building trust in AI is a collective effort involving industry leaders, researchers, policymakers, and individuals. By prioritizing security, ethical practices, user empowerment, collaborative standards, and education, we can establish a foundation of trust in AI. As we celebrate AI Appreciation Day, let us embrace these expert insights and work towards a future where AI technologies serve as trustworthy and reliable companions in our daily lives.
Suresh Sambandam, CEO, Kissflow: "As organizations embark on artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives, they need to plan for two parallel tracks. I call the first track the tactical track, where organizations need to immediately become consumers of AI services for their internal use while also providing AI-based interfaces to external touch points like customers, suppliers and partners. This needs to be done in the next 2-3 quarters. The second track is a strategic track, which fundamentally rethinks what an “AI FIRST” paradigm would look like if an organization is re-built from scratch. As we celebrate AI Appreciation Day, I hope organizations make plans for both these tracks to excel in the new AI era."
Debdoot Mukherjee, Chief Data Scientist and Head of AI, Meesho: “A day dedicated to recognizing the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a day to be celebrated. On Artificial Intelligence Appreciation Day, we need to embrace the vast impact AI has on various industries and society, combined. At Meesho, we uphold AI as a key catalyst for innovation, efficiency, and personalized experiences. Our firm conviction lies in utilizing the full potential of AI to empower millions of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in India, thereby reshaping the future of e-commerce. We remain committed to leveraging AI comprehensively to enhance the e-commerce experience of millions of users in the country."
Skand Bali, The Hyderabad Public School: “The biggest contribution that Artificial Intelligence could make to education in the Indian context would be to promote the idea of learning as learner centered.  The intervention of Al will be a collaborative exercise rather than as generative tools. Schools can find a way out to work alongside these AI tools, allowing it to help students create outlines for writing assignments, but write the essays longhand themselves. Today’s students will graduate in a world full of AI bots, tools, and generative programs. Policing students will be a much tougher task than rethinking classroom practices and restructuring learning models. 
With AI automating admin tasks, it will create more time for teachers to spend with their students, understand an individual student’s need better and modify lessons accordingly. It is not just for students, educators can use it effectively to help develop advance tests, generate case studies, write emails and rethink teaching strategies rather than spend long evenings on lesson plans and student papers.Nevertheless, we can always challenge the students to show they know more than the bot, they will jump at the challenge.”
Siraj Ali Mohamed, Director- Data and Analytics, Experion Technologies:” “With significant achievements in AI technologies, access to a wide range of datasets, and low-cost storage and computing power, the impact has been transformative in recent years. In the future too, developments in Natural Language Processing and Contextual Understanding will enable systems to provide a hyper-personalized experience – interacting with customers with a stronger understanding of their preferences, behaviors making personalized recommendations, offering customized offerings, understanding emotions and complex language nuances so well that people are not likely to make out the difference between a human and a virtual assistant or a chatbot. AI-driven technologies such as Computer Vision, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality will see more innovative use cases in the day-to-day aspects of our life, creating differentiators for businesses and enriching the customer journey.”
Karun Tadepalli, CEO & Co-Founder, byteXL: “There has been a huge watershed moment for Artificial Intelligence after ChatGPT was unveiled. AI has applications in a lots of engineering fields including automation of tasks, which massively boosting productivity and propels the economy forward. Considering how it will replace traditional IT jobs, students with AI specialization will certainly have a competitive advantage in coming years. Since Artificial Intelligence is still a nascent field - it has a lot of scope for study, research breakthroughs and coming up with new algorithms. Now is the right time for educators to skill students on AI fundamentals so that they can seize it at the right time and build upon their skillsets as the research advances.”
Anwar Hussain, Director of AI/ML & DevSecOps, CriticalRiver: “Artificial Intelligence has revolutionized technology consultancy, empowering consultants with enhanced problem-solving capabilities and streamlined decision-making processes. This new era of expertise, empowered by intelligent algorithms, is shaping the future of businesses in the digital age, delivering unparalleled value to clients, and transforming the field of technology consultancy. AI is poised to further transform the seamless digitization and automation in India, bringing about significant advancements and opportunities across various sectors. As AI continues to advance, India stands to benefit from its transformative potential. By embracing AI-driven digitization and automation, India can pave the way for improved governance, enhanced customer experiences, advanced manufacturing practices, accessible healthcare, quality education, sustainable agriculture, and efficient transportation systems.”
Ajeya Motaganahalli, VP, Engineering and Managing Director, India R&D,  Pure Storage: “Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a revolutionizing force that changes the way we innovate and interact with technology. Its transformative power extends far beyond automation and efficiency, shaping the very fabric of our society and planet. While it can contribute to environmental sustainability through various applications, it also presents challenges. Large-scale AI workloads and advanced data analytics demand higher energy consumption. The MIT Technology Review reported that training just one AI model can emit more than 3,00,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent – which is nearly five times the lifetime emissions of an average car. To lessen the environmental impact of AI, it’s important to invest in sustainable practices like green data centres using all-flash storage which have lower energy and cooling requirements. Additionally, addressing issues of bias and ensuring transparency in AI systems can contribute to fair and equitable environmental decision-making.”