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Time of India
02-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Rise of India's chief AI officers, firms navigate AI leadership role overlaps
AI generated image BENGALURU: As the technology landscape in India evolves swiftly, there is a discernible increase in the appointment of chief AI officers (CAIO) to supervise AI initiatives and strategy. The advent of such roles highlights the importance of embedding AI within core operations and an increased focus on AI-driven transformation . Firms are presently navigating the transition towards reducing friction and overlaps among leadership positions within the CDO, CTO, and CIO offices. Recently, LinkedIn announced the appointment of Deepak Agarwal as their new chief AI officer. In the previous year, Yotta Data Services introduced Anil Pawar as their chief AI officer, entrusting him with the responsibility of directing strategic initiatives in the AI cloud business unit, with a particular focus on leveraging AI, cloud, and platform technologies to deliver significant value to customers. Jindal Steel and Power brought in former BharatPe chief data officer Ritesh Mohan Srivastava as their CAIO. In another recent move, Motilal Oswal Financial Service selected Siddharth Sureka for the CAIO position, while asset management entity Mirae Asset Global Investments appointed Nishant Pradhan as their chief AI officer. SAP Labs India named Sudhakar Singh as chief AI security officer , with a remit to lead trustworthy AI initiatives for SAP Business AI. Singh's focus will be on cybersecurity, data privacy, AI regulations, and compliance within the SAP Business AI portfolio. AI unicorn Fractal Analytics appointed Ajoy Singh as its chief AI officer. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Forget Hearing Aids: This Simple Spray Changes Everything Stop Hearing Loss Learn More Undo Singh commented, 'While there is a CEO and board-level recognition about the transformative power of AI, it is also true that the field of AI is rapidly changing and there is a talent gap across levels, especially at senior levels. We are seeing more and more companies creating AI leadership roles like CAIO or Head of AI. The role of CAIO is still evolving and there are some overlaps with roles of CDO, CIO, CTO. ' According to Singh, the primary responsibility of the CAIO includes setting the AI roadmap in line with business strategy, developing a pipeline of use cases, defining architectural decisions regarding foundation models, GenAI platforms and tools, and collaborating with the CDO/CIO to create a data foundation for AI/GenAI. CAIOs are also crucial in AI governance and responsible AI. Singh added, 'In Fractal's context, the CAIO is focused on bringing all the elements of the role to create impact in Fractal's client organisation. ' Phil Fersht, CEO of US-based IT advisory HfS Research, observed that most Indian heritage service providers are treating AI as another technology implementation, rather than a more extensive and meaningful business transformation. He noted, 'The core issue is the providers are too grounded in the walls of the CIO's office and are struggling to develop the capabilities to support C-Suite leaders that are hugely impacted by AI, such as the CFO and CMO. Creating more fancy job titles only works if these executives can broaden their engagement beyond the legacy IT business.' Jayant Saran, partner at Deloitte India, noted that although chief information officers and chief information security officers are both linked to IT, their main responsibilities vary substantially. 'Similarly, regarding AI, the position of an AI officer is likely to become distinct. This mirrors the historical progression where cybersecurity, initially supervised by the chief information officer, evolved into a distinct role with the CISO previously being part of the CIO's organisational structure. Currently, whilst there is substantial discussion about responsible AI and trustworthy AI frameworks, these responsibilities primarily fall under the Chief AI Officer's purview, encompassing areas of experimentation, innovation, and ensuring the reliability and responsibility of AI platforms.' Anurag Malik, partner and leader – people consulting at EY India, said, 'My sense is that it's still fairly early-stage in most organisations. The idea starts with identifying sharp accountability for AI — whether you're calling it a chief AI officer or placing it under the chief data officer. But there's another very interesting dimension we're seeing around AI, especially when it comes to roles. A lot of organisations today are asking: Can I cluster my entire workforce into four AI personas? These personas are based on the role people are expected to play when it comes to AI. ' Malik has classified these roles as AI Ambassadors, who are the most senior executives, often at the CXO level, sponsoring AI initiatives and steering strategic direction. The second category is AI champions. 'Can I identify a few people in every functional area who are champions for AI implementation? For instance, Who's my AI champion for Finance? Who are the AI champions for supply chain? These aren't necessarily data scientists, but they understand both AI and the function well enough to identify relevant use cases and drive implementation locally. Think of them as translators between business needs and AI potential,' said Malik. AI specialists originate from diverse technology backgrounds, necessitating additional training to specialise in artificial intelligence deployment. These individuals undergo focused re-skilling or upskilling programmes to build expertise in AI implementation. General AI practitioners possess fundamental knowledge of AI concepts. Their training enables them to collaborate effectively with AI systems, even if they are not creating AI models themselves. Malik explained, 'The goal of defining these personas is twofold: to break AI implementation out of silos, and to create a culture where everyone—from leadership to the shop floor—has a role to play in AI adoption. It also helps with reskilling. Instead of a one-size-fits-all training approach, you tailor capability building based on the persona.' Stay informed with the latest business news, updates on bank holidays and public holidays . AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Time of India
24-04-2025
- Health
- Time of India
Fractal proposes indigenous AI medical models to improve healthcare
HYDERABAD: IPO-bound Fractal Analytics submitted a proposal to the IndiaAI Mission to build indigenous medical foundation models aimed at improving healthcare accessibility , medical education, and clinical decision support. Srikanth Velamakanni, co-founder of Fractal Analytics, said the estimated cost of the project would be around Rs 150 crore. Fractal proposed building a comprehensive family of foundation models—from base language models to specialised medical reasoning systems with multimodal capabilities to advance AI in healthcare, aimed at transforming the medical landscape. "The PG NEET test is taken by 200,000 people every year. Indian doctors take it annually for their post-graduation in medicine. On that test, we scored 83, which is our benchmark. All the other open-source models we accessed scored much less than that. We launched Vaidya AI to elevate it to the next level by building India's biggest breakthrough medical model," Velamakanni Mumbai-based company developed India's first multimodal medical assistant, which outperformed frontier language models like GPT-4o, Gemini, and Llama 3.2 on the PG NEET benchmark. Trained extensively with more than 650,000 images and 200,000 text samples, exhibits proficiency in processing various Indian languages, such as Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu. Fractal's proposal said that multimodal reasoning systems possess the capability to recognise patterns of symptoms, enhancing diagnostic assessments through analysis and verification across X-rays and CT scans. These systems function by validating signals between different modes of data collection, such as establishing connections between minute features of lung nodules visible in CT scans, alterations in respiratory measurements from wearable devices, and descriptive information documented in clinical records. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Free P2,000 GCash eGift UnionBank Credit Card Apply Now Undo India's healthcare system demonstrates a pressing need for technological advancements. The disparity in healthcare access is particularly evident in rural and semi-urban regions, where the ratio of doctors to patients surpasses 1:1,500, significantly higher than the WHO's recommended standard of 1:1,000. He said the medical reasoning model supports doctors and patients with diagnosis and health-related questions. "The model can aid medical reasoning. It can assist a doctor in reaching a diagnosis. It could help a patient understand their symptoms or determine what their side effects might be. It can also provide guidance on what nutrition they should follow." The tech roadmap has two phases, with the first one incorporating a foundational language model trained from scratch on 18T tokens, STEM content, coding, and educational material. It also includes a multimodal foundation integrating the vision encoder with the language model. The second phase includes meta-cognitive abilities, self-reflection, and expert-level medical reasoning capabilities. Velamakanni said Fractal has an extensive collection of educational materials, including PG NEET and MBBS examination books covering the five-year medical programme. The dataset underwent thorough preparation through text standardisation, medical term identification, and contextual parsing before being utilised to calibrate Vaidya, ensuring its foundation in reliable, examination-focused medical knowledge and clinical analysis. Stay informed with the latest business news, updates on bank holidays and public holidays . Master Value & Valuation with ET! Learn to invest smartly & decode financials. Limited seats at 33% off – Enroll now!
