Artificial Intelligence can transform Indian Railways

NEW DELHI: ?Artificial Intelligence (AI) can transform Indian Railways in terms of safety; passenger amenities; better revenues, growth & efficiency? said Piyush Goyal while addressing the AI Conference in New Delhi.nnThe Union Minister for Railways and Coal, Goyal was speaking at the valedictory session of the Conference organized by the Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS), an Information Technology arm of Ministry of Railways today.nnThe Minister said, Artificial Intelligence is nothing to be feared or to feel threatened by but to use for our benefit.nnHarnessing AI for organizational and social good can yield far reaching benefits to our country and Indian Railways, the Minister emphasized. ?Artificial Intelligence has to be harnessed to find digital innovations for better customer interface and better service delivery. Artificial Intelligence is about creating trains with brains?, Goyal added.nnThe Minister hoped that Indian Railways will get benefitted with the experiences shared by the experts who participated today in the conference.nnCRIS organized a day long conference with invigorating technical sessions on the theme of Ártificial Intelligence for innovations in Customer Experience and Service Delivery?. Indian Railways plays a key role in the Indian growth story. The challenge is to improve revenues and enhance customer experience while improving efficiency and reliability of operations. The speakers deliberated on how Artificial Intelligence can help in enhancing customer experience as well as improve revenues.nnIt was noted that use of AI can help in route optimization; real time train movement monitoring; crew fostering; improving the price advantage of rail freight; improving logistics chain integration. Speakers also pointed out advantages of using Artificial Intelligence in predictive maintenance to improve asset management, Crowd management; chat bots for consumer interaction in different regional languages; IoT of sensors to detect concerns on tracks and locomotives.nnThe conference was inaugurated by  Ashwani Lohani, Chairman, Railway Board & Mohd Jamshed, Member Traffic, Railway Board along with senior board members and Railway officials. The conference had distinguished speakers from IT Industry.nnSpeaking on the occasion, Lohani, Chairman Railway Board said , ?Artificial intelligence has the potential to create an ecosystem that makes the lives of humans more comfortable. It is in this context, that we need to explore how these technological developments can be garnered to create a more pleasurable rail travel experience. Future has unlimited possibilities and Railways being a mass transporter any effort in this direction will yield big benefits.? CRB added that despite technology, empathy in finding solutions for passenger comfort has to be the driving spirit.nnIndian Railways is poised to utilize Artificial Intelligence in multiple ways. Customer experience, process optimization and asset maintenance can greatly benefit from the application of Artificial Intelligence tools and techniques.nnArtificial intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of a human brain function by machines. AI machine can perform human mind activities, such as, logical reasoning, learning and self correction.