“AI is conspicuously everywhere, and this revolution is like none before in history. The power and promises of AI evoke excitement, open new vistas for enterprises and individuals, new hopes for drastic changes in how we live our lives. There is the hype of generative AI as a panacea to all our business and individual need for efficiency. And with the mad rush to embrace the new technology, it seems like our lives now revolve around some form of AI or other. At the same time AI also instils fear and apprehensions in people’s minds. Fear of losing jobs, fear of rouge AI agents harming mankind, fear of playing second fiddle to a mere creation of humans. All this confusion and uncertainty make the decision makers, leaders, and people in general anxious about how to respond to this double-edged sword thrust upon them.

This is where the simple, purely benevolent type of AI brings new focus on AI’s utility. That is Applied AI. Applied AI is where AI, machine learning, deep learning and NLP/LLM technologies are used in various domains such as medicine, agriculture, education, energy, infrastructure, governance and so on to enhance the usefulness, effectiveness, speed and quality of the services provided in these domains to society. There is still some fear of loss of jobs and potentially harmful outcomes involved. But the positive impact of using AI in these services outweigh the negative possibilities.

Keeping in mind the transformational powers of Applied AI, the AI and HPC Research Center (AHRC) has been established at IIT Bhubaneswar recently to harness this technology to serve people in all strata of society. With a national and global interdisciplinary network of over 100 professionals from diverse fields, AHRC is building AI tools that strive toward shaping a world where humans and AI can exist in harmony – building AI for Social Good.”