Its time India build a future around cognitive: IBM President

Global tech giant IBM on Wednesday said working on cognitive computing that helps in decision making is the future for India, which is already a leader in information technology.

"As a country, India has been digitising and digitising the world. The foundation is in place. Digital is the foundation. India's next path is to now make the world cognitive. That would be the difference maker," its chairwoman, president and chief executive Ginni Rometty said at the annual NILF here.

This should involve building abilities on natural language processing, machine learning, deep learning, image and vision, she said.

"You are a country of developers, which is why I say cognitive is India's future," she said, adding that by 2020 the country will be home to the largest developer population in the world and 3 million programmers will be helping develop at least ten per cent of the apps this year.

She asked for a wise use of technologies in such a way that the industry "guides" the technology safely and also made a pitch for transparency and openness.

The company's artificial intelligence platform Watson will be touching the lives of 1 billion people across the world including 200 million people each in the fields of healthcare and education.

Giving out details of the efforts that have gone into building its healthcare platform, she said Watson can be very helpful in a country like India which has only 1 oncologist for 1,600 cancer patients.

Rometty said she has met Prime Minister Narendra Modi thrice till now and has come out feeling positive after each of those meetings and added that the potential held by the country is "unparalleled".

"This is a moment historic change and you have to embrace it. Build a future around cognitive. I think no country has a more important role to play than India," she said.