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AI's Promise and Perils Discussed at Great Lakes Memorial Lecture

Great Lakes Institute of Management inaugurated the Dr. Bala V. Balachandran Memorial Lecture with Dr. Partha Sarathy Mohanram discussing "The Promise and Perils of AI."

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The debut Dr. Bala V. Balachandran Memorial Lecture has been hosted by the Great Lakes Institute of Management at the Taj Connemara, Chennai. This event, organized by the Madras Management Association, brought together 150 strategic and professionals of the various industries.

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Dr. Partha Sarathy Mohanram, a professor holding the John H. Watson Chair in Value Investing at the University of Toronto, presented an intriguing lecture entitled "The Promise and Perils of AI." He discussed AI's revolutionary effects on industries and education, its potential to streamline the government's work, and its contribution in the automation of tedious tasks such as entry work by the robot.

Dr. Mohanram was of the viewpoint that AI not only offers an enormous potential but is also a moral issue that demands openness and accountability. "AI is not only incapable of making human judgments but also is heavily reliant on the quality of the data it is trained on," he stated, referring to the possibility that non-performances may occur.

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Dr. Partha Sarathy Mohanram, John H. Watson Chair in Value Investing, University being felicitated at Dr. Bala V. Balachandran Memorial Lecture organised by Great Lakes Chennai
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Gautam Lakhamraju, Board Member and COO of Great Lakes, worth noting that the series of seminars is dedicated to Bala’s memory as a communicator between academia and industry. The well-known leader in the field of management education, Dr. Bala V. Balachandran, made an impact through the institution of the Great Lakes Institute of Management and the development of programs at ISB Hyderabad and MDI Gurgaon.

This series is intended to keep alive Dr. Bala's lifecycle mission by elaborating on the main points of technology, management, and society.

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Balancing Transformation and Responsibility

At the lecture attendees were given an extensive explanation of AI and machine learning that relate to various industries and functional areas. Dr Mohanram was a named scientist and a researcher who has been a witness to the development of AI in the world of science and application, tracing back to the undergraduate thesis about neural networks which were created by someone for the purpose of speech recognition.

A primary theme for the emergence of AI was highlighted by the speaker who attributed it to the advancements in deep machine learning, the strong ecosystem for AI startups, and the increasing business case for widespread AI adoption. There were plenty of goals they wanted to achieve in the sectors of manufacturing, logistics, marketing, human resources, R&D, and finance which is why the speaker was mentioning them as well.

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He observed that, "One of the immediate effects that AI can bring about in the area of R&D for instance, is the reduction in the costs of production and thus the increase in the efficiency of the whole process which is true both for activities of drug discovery, complex prototyping, and simulations."

On the other hand, he explained some of the negative sides and difficulties of AI, such as job displacement, bias and discrimination, privacy concerns, lack of accountability, and environmental impact. Moreover, he stressed that a balanced approach is the only way forward and said: "However, one should not forget the dot-com bubble during the 1990s as an example of wildly overvalued companies whose irrational exuberance led the group to their downfall.

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