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Black tuxedos don't always portray a man with a hefty bank balance. Often a man in a black tuxedo signifies the intelligent brain that he hides behind the humbleness of his personality. Such is a man whose name comes with the concept of something that is artificially intelligent.
Born on 13th June 1937
Ryan, a five-year toddler asked Alexa to play his favourite song, Digger Digger. But Alexa being the delinquent disc heard something else. This ‘something else’ turned out to be a hilarious response- “You want to hear a station for porn detected…hot chick amateur girl sexy.” The dirty thoughts of Alexa didn’t stop here and she continued to name several sites that might not be appropriate for a five-year-old toddler. To err isn’t just human - machines make mistakes, too.
Artificial Intelligence or just AI is no longer limited to those Sci-Fi movies that make us gasp every second. AI is something that has become quite real in recent times. Be it the disc that Ryan has on his table, or Siri on your ridiculously expensive iPhones, or the average man’s Google Assistant, Artificial Intelligence has made its mark in this era.
Chitti from Rajnikanth’s Robot 2.0 and G.One from Shahrukh’s Ra.One is no more limited to the scientific laboratories of these movies. Manav, the first humanoid robot of India along with the beautiful Sophia who became the first robot citizen of the world, will make a perfect couple. That’s how far the world has reached in the field of AI.
From “Google, can you tell me the current weather outside?” to “Google, suggest some gifts for my girlfriend”; artificial intelligence has given us our very own personal assistants. This feature of Voice to Speech certainly makes our life a lot easier. But who is the man behind this feature?
The one who made this magic possible was Dabbala Rajagopal Reddy. Introducing the first-ever speech recognition system called Hearsay-I which was a machine in the form of human talents of interacting effortlessly with others, he indeed made the technical marvel of the era.
Born in the small village of Andhra Pradesh, Reddy was the son of a farmer. He proved that sirf raja ka beta hi raja nahi banta. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the College of Engineering in Guindy, Dabbala decided to explore the opportunities abroad. Little did he know that his destiny rested in countries that were miles away from India.
Reddy’s grand entry into the world of science and technology took place when he received his PhD in computer science from Stanford University. He kickstarted his career as a University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. From the year 1960, Raj started working for IBM in Australia. The eerie smile and professor look suited him perfectly. After working as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science for some years, he decided to become a full-time professor.
Raj’s research started in the labs of Stanford University when he was a student. His research topics were exclusively focused on perceptual and motor aspects of intelligence such as speech, language, vision, and robotics.
Within 50 years, Reddy and some of his friends collectively made some revolutionary benchmarks in the field of spoken language systems ranging from voice control of a robot to unrestricted vocabulary dictation. The entire group of technical wizards also made some notable contributions to Task-Oriented Computer Architectures, Analysis of Natural Scenes, Universal Access to Information, and many more.
After making the first speech recognition system called Hearsay-I, Reddy is also planning on launching several other techie marvels such as Hearsay-II, Dragon, Harpy, and Sphinx I/II which might sound like some normal names to most of us.
Even after leaving his motherland to settle in foreign lands, Reddy did not stop his ingenious contributions to his country. Born and brought up in a village where education was a far-sighted dream, Raj decided to fulfil the dreams of those small kids in rural areas. He provided computerized classrooms and rural medical delivery which changed the entire horizon of the rural world.
Many other student-oriented programs were launched by Raj including the Universal Digital Library Project which was used as a tool to scan books and other media such as music, videos, paintings, and newspapers. This project gave free access to any student studying from anywhere in the world.
Raj Reddy is the epitome of that perfect scientist Rajnikanth portrayed in Robot. If Dr Vaseegaran built Chitti, Raj built the foundational structure of Artificial Intelligence in India. Winner of the Turing Award that is considered one of the most reputable awards in the field of AI, Raj continues to inspire thousands of aspirants who want to make a career in the field.
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