Photo: Akshay Zadgaonkar meeting Microsoft Chief Satya Nadella

Also read: How BabyVerse is advancing parenting with AI tools.

“AI is like an impressionable baby that learns fast, and forms opinions faster!”

Recently, Akshay Zadgaonkar, CTO at BabyVerse had the opportunity to meet Satya Nadella, Executive Chairman and CEO of Microsoft. During this conversation, they talked about ways in which AI is shaping the world and the potential it holds. Here are some interesting highlights from their discussion.

“It’s all about putting wisdom to work.” – Akshay Z

As someone who’s been passionate about technology being put to real-world use, Akshay has always been excited about the possibilities of AI and its potential to create real impact at scale. 

The discussion kicked off with this insight, furthering into how it’s possible to create a free world where AI tools are accessible to everyone. Akshay talked about how it begins with building a wider space for domain-experts like BabyVerse to share useful knowledge with people. This creates possibilities for tech professionals and potential beneficiaries to connect with each other on bringing in specific real-world solutions.

Satya agreed, saying that technology that doesn’t truly benefit people is ultimately useless. He went on to remark something that makes the use of AI seem even more plausible for real-world scenarios.

“Don’t you think it would be wonderful if we used ‘non-conventional’ AI sources?” – Satya Nadella

As an example, he said that an AI solving both math and literature questions gives far better results than one that only solves math problems.

BabyVerse’s plans on AI: A short summary

When it comes to parenting, there is a dearth of proper guidance from trusted sources. In addition, there are tons of things to take care of! Parents always have so much to do and so little time. Here’s where AI can step in. It can optimize this learning process and provide ‘context-sensitive’ guidance. Thus, parents get the right information at the right time without having to explicitly ask for it. One less thing to worry about!

Now let’s look at some use cases BabyVerse is working on.

Based on baby’s age: Parenting requirements highly differ based on a baby’s age. When the best practices for the baby’s nutrition, growth and overall well-being are delivered to parents as a daily, weekly and monthly to-do list, it reduces a lot of burden off their shoulders.

Based on seasonality & calendar events: Environment changes are predictable and so are the challenges that come with them. Whether it is winters or festivals or any other calendar-events, these inputs fed into the app can ensure that the right advice is catered at the right moment. 

Based on devices: Knowing patterns of when parents access which devices can help deliver the solutions on the right device. Syncing across the user’s current digital environment of phones, home automation, smart TVs and virtual assistants will provide possibilities of providing the right shape, size and format of the media basis the device of choice.

Based on baby’s development: Each baby is unique and so are their growth trajectories. Understanding this data and providing personalized advice based on their progress. This can help in achieving growth that is considered as ‘optimal’ by WHO, UN and growth experts.

Video-based analysis: Currently, the ‘record’ feature on the app allows parents to record their baby’s activities on the app. The next phase is to use image-processing technology with AI. This will train the AI to identify growth delays in babies. The goal is for it to track the baby’s movements and notice and deviances and notify the parents if it’s time to consult with a doctor. This would be extremely useful in reducing fundamental risks in early years, which can help children reach their full growth potential.

BabyVerse is also considering a plethora of other inputs such as medical history, medications taken, frequency of a particular illness, allergies, nutritional likes and all other parameters that could help fine-tune the app to provide the right advice to parents. We’re happy to say that our app is using innovative and practical ways to help with parenting challenges. Soon, its capabilities will be more expanded with AI, which we’re super excited about. Stay tuned for future updates!

Read more about the event here: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/technology-not-only-about-economic-growth-nadella/article66338637.ece.