About the speaker:

Mr. Seturaman Mahalingam started his professional career with Tata Consultancy Services in 1970. In his 42-year career with TCS, Mr.Mahalingam has been involved in myriad aspects of the Company’s operations and growth, before being appointed as the Chief Financial Officer of the Company in February 2003 and as Executive Director in August 2007. He retired from TCS in February 2013 after serving the company for over 42 years.

A chartered accountant by qualification, Mr.Mahalingam began his career as an IT consultant and thereafter played a major role in marketing TCS services across the globe, developing processes, and creating large software development centers for the Company.

As an early starter in the Indian IT industry, Mr.Mahalingam has played a key role in helping TCS become a $ 11.6 billion global company with over 275,000 employees, at the time he retired.

Mr.Mahalingam’s experience, during the formative years of the IT industry in the 1970s and 1980s, has given him significant standing within the IT industry. He has been the President of the Computer Society of India. He is a former Chairman of the Southern Region of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), He was also the President of the Institute of Management Consultants of India. He is on the board of Sundaram Finance Ltd, Lucas TVS Ltd, Kasturi & Sons Ltd, TVS Supply Chain Solutions Ltd, JSW Steel Ltd, and Sundram Fasteners Ltd, besides a few not-for-profit organizations.

Mr.Mahalingam is the Honorary Consul for the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg at Chennai, with jurisdiction over Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Mr.Mahalingam was chosen as the best ‘CFO” in various years by Business Today, International Market Assessment (IMA), CNBC TV18, CFO Innovation, FinanceAsia, and Institutional Investors. In 2012, Treasury & Risk, a US-based magazine named him as one of the 16 globally most influential CFOs.

About the speaker:

Dr Balasubramanian has been a Consultant, Group Leader, CIO, CEO, and Profit Centre Head in the Information Technology industry in his career spanning four decades. He has played a noteworthy role in establishing analytics practice in India and India as a premier offshore service destination. He was instrumental in introducing high-quality standards for software delivery services and in building up the skill sets of thousands of employees. He has worked in India, Jamaica, and the USA.

Over the years, Dr Balasubramanian has sustained considerable interest in academics and executive training. He has been a guest faculty and invited speaker in numerous colleges, executive training programs, and industry fora. He has written chapters in Handbook of Operations Research [CRC press], Handbook of Automation [Elsevier Publishers], and in Cultural Factors in Systems Design: Decision Making and Action [ CRC Press]. Dr Balasubramanian is a member of the Enterprise Integration Consortium at Penn State University USA, Board of studies at RVCE and MSRIT in Bangalore, and CIT in Coimbatore.

Dr Balasubramanian has Engineering and Management degrees from IIT, Madras; and a Doctorate from the School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University in 1977 specializing in Operations Research. He has been recognized as an Outstanding Industrial Engineering Alumnus by Purdue University in March 2001; a Fellow at Infosys Technologies Limited in 2002 and made an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Institute of Materials Management in 2005. He was an honorary Entrepreneur In Residence at Purdue University, Discovery Park from 2006 to 2011.

Abstract of the talk:

Title: Defining Smart and Intelligent Systems Boundary

Intelligent and Smart Systems define the cutting edge of information technology now. They are invisible yet ubiquitous. From identifying individual student’s lack of attention to suggesting remedial measures, from predicting financial failures to preventing future fraud, and from assisting noninvasive surgery to guiding missiles to moving targets, the Artificial Intelligence-based applications are stepping into every domain. Numerous concerns have emerged in parallel. Should they be permitted to run a completely human-less system? Can they be assigned all cognitive non-routine tasks that humans are good at? Are they effective communicators and consensus builders? What role should they play in decision-making? How good are they in picking up data compared to human senses? These and many other questions have surfaced in many fora. Data used in the model building adds another dimension. How unbiased are the data sets used in training? Can a data set be ever unbiased? What are the consequences of data bias in models and algorithms? This talk explores the issues of setting the boundary for use of AI technology. Areas of concern are delineated, and principles of restraint are advocated. It aims to inspire researchers to keep the boundary in mind as they explore new frontiers in AI and to design stable boundary-line interfaces.