Digital Footprint

Talks

[Talk]

Mar 25, 2023

A 30 minute talk by Prof. B. Ravindran, followed by a 45 minute discussion involving panelists Murali Meenakshi Sundaram, Distinguished Technology & Prof. B. Ravindran of IIT Madras. This talk is a part of the monthly lecture organized by Varahamihira Science Forum.

[Talk]

Mar 1, 2022

In this talk, Prof. Ravindran will discuss the real-world challenges of AI and how to foresee and tackle them.

[Talk]

Dec 12, 2021

Its about using AI for social impact and how domain knowledge is more important than employing complex AI in socially relevant projects

[Talk]

Oct 8, 2020

In this session, Professor B. Ravindran will talk about his journey into Artificial Intelligence.

[Talk]

Sep 26, 2020

[Talk]

May 23, 2020

This talk will help you to answer the AI questions like - Do we use AI in our daily life? Why should I learn about it?; Will AI take over Humans? Should we be excited or be worried?; What is the impact of AI on the traditional job market as we know it?

[Talk]

May 6, 2020

In this talk, Prof. Ravindran will talk about how reinforcement learning differs from traditional ML and why it is the next big thing in AI?

[Talk]

Jan 27, 2020

Data gathered from various sources ranging from Economics to Biomedical Sciences is having a huge impact on the policy decisions being made in current times and this is only going to increase in the future. An analysis of such large amounts of data gathered from diverse fields requires experts from Mathematics, Engineering, Science, Economics and Social Sciences to work together for the betterment of society. Hence, there is an immediate need to accelerate data based research in these areas. This is The Fourth Paradigm of Science, with the other three being empirical measurements, theoretical modelling and computer simulations.

[Talk]

Sep 12, 2019

Over the past decade AI technologies have seen a 3rd revival and have captured the popular imagination yet again. In this seminar, Prof. Ravindran will briefly talk about two of the paradigms that underly much of the modern successes - deep neural networks and reinforcement learning. He will touch upon their biological motivations and also sound a note of caution about their failings.

[Talk]

Jun 13, 2019

AI has been called many things - the next stage in the evolution of intelligence, the end of the human race, the reason for the next world war, the solution to all our problems, human-like intelligence, etc. Mr. Ravindran argues that all of these do not really apply to AI, at any rate, not yet. AI is more like a toddler taking first steps, and it will be what you want it to be. Don't tag AI, it is the people that use AI that make it good or evil.

Podcasts and Interviews

[Podcast]

Apr 26, 2023

In this week's edition of TimesTechies Webinars, Prof. B. Ravindran discusses the necessary guardrails needed to ensure that AI innovation is aligned with societal well-being and to minimize potential risks associated with its development and deployment.

[Interview]

Mar 10, 2023

The AI industry is projected to be worth over 15 trillion dollars by 2030. The fear is that not enough debates are happening in our legislative spaces, among our policy makers, there isn't enough stakeholder input and that by the time regulation tries to catch up, the user base of this technology will be so large that any real regulation will become tough if not impossible. But are our anxieties about AI overblown, or, are we on the other hand, underestimating the dangers? To get to that we need clarity on what exactly AI is and does and could potentially do or be? The preeminent voice in India on Artificial intelligence, Dr Balaraman Ravindran who heads the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence at IIT Madras joins us on the show.

[Podcast]

Jan 28, 2022

To demystify and explain AI to school students, the IIT Madras Alumni Association hosted a talk between Professor Balaraman Ravindran and school kids, college-goers, and even business professionals. The idea was to understand everyone’s level of understanding of the technology and see their perspective along with clarifying their doubts.

[Interview]

Jul 19, 2021

Professor Balaraman Ravindran is the Mindtree Faculty Fellow and the Head of Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science & AI (RBCDSAI), IIT Madras. In an exclusive interview with Analytics India Magazine, Prof. B Ravindran spoke about IIT Madras’ contributions to the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence and machine learning in India. Recently, researchers at the institute have developed an AI-based mathematical model to identify cancer-causing alterations in cells.

[Podcast]

Mar 19, 2021

Untangling the Web - A PODCAST OF THE WEB SCIENCE TRUST, HOSTED BY THE SONIC RESEARCH GROUP AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

[Interview]

Jul 15, 2020

Presented on “AI & ML in India,” overview of careers, industry, and research. This was a part of the Times Techies Webinars conducted on July 15, 2020.

[Podcast]

Feb 7, 2019

Professor B. Ravindran has an incredibly rich background in academic research, headlined by his work in reinforcement learning. His Google Scholar profile shows his research papers have been cited over 2,200+ times. He has a penchant of explaining the most complex topics in words even beginners are able to grasp. It’s just one of the many reasons his talk at DataHack Summit 2018 was a super hit among our community.

[Interview]

Oct 5, 2018

It's fascinating how conversations with AI researchers go beyond technologies and tools shaping AI. It quickly becomes philosophical and even ideological while discussing the ills of machine learning systems making decisions impacting humans and society.

[Interview]

Jun 28, 2018

Last month, we took Prof. Balaraman Ravindran, professor of Reinforcement Learning at the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras and head of the school’s Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, to a noisy arcade at a converted airport hangar just north of Edmonton. In between Atari battles, we discussed why games are a crucial way to learn how to solve much bigger, more complex problems, the pros and cons of scalar rewards, and the natural link between RL and deep learning.

[Podcast]

Aug 17, 2017

What do you know about reinforcement learning and prescriptive analytics? Associate Professor Balaraman Ravindran joins us today to share his vast knowledge of this emerging field, including its history, an introductory overview, how it is different from supervised and unsupervised learning, and examples of its applications.

Other Activities

[News]

Dec 15, 2021

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has named 63 Distinguished Members for outstanding contributions to the field. All 2021 inductees are longstanding ACM members and were selected by their peers for a range of accomplishments that advance computing as a science and a profession.

[News]

Sep 23, 2021

Indian Institute of Technology Madras has announced a partnership with Taylor & Francis Group, its publishing partnership with the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (RBCDSAI).

[News]

Jul 20, 2020

With an increased dependence on technology after COVID-19, the time for some disruption has never been more important. With a firm eye on the future is IIT Madras with much help from its Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. The institute recently launched an online BSc programme in Data Science and Programming, only highlighting how much it prioritises the course. "Faculty from ten departments of IIT Madras are part of the Robert Bosch Centre — including from several engineering departments like Computer Science, Civil, Chemical and Mechanical, Mathematics, Management Studies, Biotechnology and even Humanities," Dr Balaraman Ravindran, Head, Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence told Edex.

[News]

Feb 17, 2020

Chennai-based technology institute IIT-Madras will collaborate in a project backed by search giant Google to develop AI-driven systems to predict engagement and churn in a phone-based information system meant for expectant mothers. IIT Madras has tied up with Google for its "AI for Social Good" initiative and will handle two projects with accredited NGOs in the country, Balaraman Ravindran, who heads the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and AI at IIT Madras, told ET on Monday.

[Authored Article]

May 16, 2019

AI - Why the Recent Excitement? | Geography and You

Isolated events such as AI driven programmes serves to deepenits mystique. AI mimics human intelligence and are better at tasksthat demonstrably need high levels of acumen

[Authored Article]

Jul 13, 2018

There is tremendous excitement in the air about artificial intelligence (AI) across the world today. Everyone seems to be talking about AI—from leaders of the industry, scientific thinkers, heads of state, to the grandmother next door. The subject has been widely welcomed as the salvation of humankind, and, at the same time, has invited criticism for bringing in the potential doom of humans.

[Article]

Jun 4, 2018

In a quest to demystify this tremendously arcane area of AI research, FactorDaily spoke to Professor Balaraman Ravindran, an IIT Madras professor, who is widely considered to be India's foremost reinforcement learning expert.

[News]

Oct 14, 2017

It is known that DeepMind, the company which was acquired by Google, produced an algorithm called AlphaGo that beat the world's number one at the Go game. One of the methods behind the success of AlphaGo, called deep reinforcement learning, is being further developed by IIT Madras researchers to construct their own algorithm to play not just the Go game, but for more complex tasks.