Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is not just turning out to be a buzzword among enterprises — its adoption and use cases are witnessing a big jump across industries.

This was one of the messages that emerged when a flock of top tech professionals and corporate honchos met in Mumbai last Friday at “Infocom’’, the premier IT event from ABP Group.

Since its inception in 2002, Infocom has not only seen the dot plot of the industry but also addressed critical matters during its deliberations such as emerging challenges, technology and last but not the least, disruption.

The event drew an enthusiastic response, with rains in the country’s commercial capital not acting as a dampener.

The theme of the event was `Sustainable Disruption’ and it looked to address the trend of organisations expediting their business outcomes by unlocking the value of their data.

Headlining the event was a workshop on GenAI where Mohit Sewak, researcher and developer relations manager at NVIDIA, disclosed that more enterprises are now latching on to GenAI.

He cited a Goldman Sachs study which said out of the total IT spending of $650 billion, around $150 billion would be going into GenAI in the future.

Sewak said the GenAI pie is growing not simply because the IT spend is increasing, but there is now a major shift.

``It used to be a small percentage of IT spending but we are now seeing GenAI gaining a major portion of IT expenditure. We are also seeing active use cases which are at the core of enterprises being powered by GenAI. We are seeing a tremendous growth in adoption and use cases’’, he said.

His optimism comes at a time domestic IT giants such as Infosys and TCS have been betting on GenAI.

Sewak was followed by Mrutyunjay Mahapatra, member, board of directors and chairman audit committee at the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH).

He had one important message for the audience —draw a strategy that is fit for
the purpose.

Pointing out that one should not look to use a bulldozer when a simple spade is needed, Mahapatra also asked enterprises to look at the millennial mindset and reminded them that `culture eats strategy for breakfast’.

He noted that as enterprises work towards their strategic goals, the cultural impediments should be nibbled away.

Leveraging data

The next discussion was on ‘Leveraging Data and AI for competitive advantage’ which saw the participation of Arindam Ghosh, CTO and head of corporate strategy and digital, Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance, and Puneet Kohli, president IT & CIO, Liberty General Insurance company.

They spoke about how data is giving 'actionable insight’ into customer behaviour, his or her needs apart from enabling insurers on how to position a product.

The event then saw participants brainstorming on subjects such as data centres which are witnessing huge investments from various players in India to redefining security in a networked world.

It ended with a talk by celebrity author Devdutt Pattanaik on the evolution of intelligence from human to artificial.