Artificial Intelligence has dual nature - on the one hand it has immense potential, but on the other hand people have unrealistic expectations of its capabilities, said Balaraman Ravindran, Head, School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, IIT-Madras.
Speaking at the Founder’s Day celebration of Thiagarajar College of Engineering (TCE) in Madurai, his alma mater, on Monday, he said new technologies relied heavily on AI which has been in the works since the 1950s. He reflected on the evolving relationship between humans and AI.
The perception of AI’s capabilities had shifted dramatically over the years, he said and cautioned against over-reliance on AI, pointing out that tools like ChatGPT can produce outputs that may not align with the cultural values. One must know AI also has limitations, he said.
Soma Velayutham, General Manager of NVIDIA , spoke on the importance of creating AI technologies that respect and incorporate ancient languages such as Tamil. He advocated integrating AI with Tamil and suggested that such a fusion would have profound global benefits.
He also inaugurated the Tamil AI Centre initiative at the TCE
A total of 227 students received scholarships worth ₹86.98 lakh on the occasion.
In his address, TCE chairman and correspondent K. Hari Thiagarajan said the alumni charitable fund corpus had swelled to ₹7 crore. It played a crucial role in supporting deserving students. Every year, the interest accrued from the fund was distributed to needy students on Founder’s Day, he said.
Following the clearance under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, the TCE alumni who have settled in the U.S. have started contributing to the alumni fund, he said.
Earlier, M. Palaninatha Raja, Principal (in charge), welcomed the gathering. S. Parthasarathy, Professor and Head, Data Science Department, proposed the vote of thanks.
