Edition 21
The Tata group’s takeover of Air India and the rise of Artificial Intelligence as a keyword in technology has been nearly parallel. With Air India’s IATA code being AI and Artificial Intelligence being shortened as AI – there always is confusion for avgeeks when someone says AI.
Last week, AI – the airline, said that it has become the world’s first airline to have successfully deployed a Generative AI virtual agent called “Maharaja” powered by Azure OpenAI service. It has successfully answered over half a million customer queries since its pilot launch in March 2023 and managed over 6,000 queries a day in four languages. It is available in four languages – Hindi, English, French and German.
I decided to give it a try. I first asked the Maharaja if a flight was on time. This doesn’t truly constitute AI – Artificial Intelligence, since it merely would fetch the data from the flight status page and display. It did, but all it said as status was “Departed”. The flight had arrived albeit with a small delay and the airport websites, FlightRadar24 and AI’s own website were showing the flight having arrived. So the AI was not able to check AI’s website and show the data in this case.
While I was checking, the most talked about topic was Amsterdam’s slots. AI had to withdraw its Amsterdam service due to slot constraints. I thought I would ask the Maharaja about this. The Maharaja told me that AI flies non-stop to Amsterdam from Delhi, clearly it does not and neither are the flights available for sale or part of the schedule.
The verdict definitely is a thumbs down for AI – not the airline in this case. This put a few questions in my mind. How is AI – the airline, defining success? Will this tool be really useful and if it has been released without thorough testing, especially something as basic as flight status!
These are early days for both AI’s, one as a technology and another as a privatized entity and both are being watched closely by enthusiasts and professionals in respective fields. For now, there are more questions than answers and hope that the multiple projects which Air India is pursuing are not released as this one. People may not be happy with the speed of transition at Air India, but definitely everybody is rooting for its success and world dominance. Real intelligence will be needed to weed out such Artificial ones for now.
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Great work to show the mirror when it’s really needed. Thanks for this.