Industry experts, Gianfranco Messina from Hitachi Rail Shamik Mehta from Hitachi Digital Services and Sudhanshu Gaur from Hitachi America R&D, address challenges in realizing the digital transformation of factories, and propose strategies for building digitally enabled factories through outcome-driven projects and effective stakeholder communication to transform the way people work and drive business growth.

No country, developing or modern, can take access to water for granted. Climate change does not discriminate -- and a holistic approach to water management is essential. Dr. Raja Kadiyala from Jacobs joins Rajesh Devnani from Hitachi Vantara and Ravi Vennelakanti from Hitachi America to discuss the co-creation of AI-enabled water management solutions that go beyond big data to generate actionable data and insights.

In recent years, reinforcement learning (RL) has shown performance beyond that of humans in games and robotics but there are still many hurdles that need to be cleared before we can apply it to real-world systems. In this dialogue, we discuss the challenges faced in applying RL to increasingly complex real-world systems with Professor Aaron Courville from the Université de Montréal and a founding member of Mila.

Decarbonization is becoming a driving force behind decisions and innovations in the energy industry worldwide, and significant investments are being made in technology to implement this transformation. Professor Raja Ayyanar from Arizona State University, Dr. Daniel Haughton from the Arizona Public Service join Ernst Scholtz from Hitachi Energy and Bo Yang from Hitachi America to discuss current and future trends in energy systems.

We are beginning to see new possibilities and issues in a new style of democracy where “citizens think for themselves and participate in policy decisions.” In this dialogue, we exchange views with Professor Taniguchi of the University of Tokyo and the author of “Digital democracy is coming!” on his thoughts on the current state of citizen participation in policy-making, the ideal, issues, and the possibilities of leveraging AI.

AI and surrounding technologies are being increasingly applied in the workplace to increase safety and efficiency. In this article, we sit down with Prof. Dr. Didier Stricker at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) to discuss the use of AI in the workplace, its benefits and challenges, human-AI collaboration and its impact on workers.

As countries transition from a reliance on fossil fuels to a more sustainable energy mix, EVs are seen as an effective way to introduce an electricity-based road transport infrastructure supported by the energy mix available at each stage of the transition. In this article, we focus on Singapore’s evolving EV ecosystem and the current challenges in EV adoption.

The transportation sector is at the cusp of significant disruption. The sector’s traditional public versus private bifurcated operational structure is converging to give way to a new ecosystem focusing on riders to deliver a seamless multimodal travel experience. In this article, experts who are helping to shape the domain, discuss the future of mobility, policy approaches in multimodality and how Hitachi can contribute.

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to expand its presence in our day-to-day lives, but how has COVID-19 affected AI’s applications? And how can AI technology help address the kinds of challenges presented by the pandemic? These questions were addressed at "Hitachi Social Innovation Forum 2021 - India Online" by a panel on "AI in post–COVID-19 India."

Artificial intelligence (AI) and video analytics are rapidly becoming integral parts of our lives, transforming corporate activities, and creating many opportunities to improve the human condition. Recent developments in the field have led some experts to suggest that the ability of AI has moved beyond recognition to cognition, where AI is not only able to grasp concepts but find deeper or “hidden” meaning from images.

Nick Blake, Chief Innovation Strategist at Hitachi Europe R&D, recently moderated a discussion on the importance of digital trust. He was joined by Sascha Maschek and Viljem Pitako from Akarion GmbH; Oliver Bendig from Deloitte; Toby Lewis from Novum Insights; and Sean Hanford and Alan Jenkins from Hitachi’s Security Business Group – EMEA, who shared their thoughts on key components.

Alex Lin, Deputy CEO of NTUitive and Board Director of Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) moderates a conversation on smart cities and the role they can play in driving a positive impact on society. The roundtable was hosted by Wujuan Lin from Hitachi Asia R&D, and was joined by Teck Leong Lim, Director of the Physical Planning Group in the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore; Colin Lim, a Smart City/Mobility Consultant and former CEO of mobilityX, and Theo Scherman, Chief Strategy Officer at Hitachi Asia Ltd.

As more and more data from the real world becomes available, the challenge or question will be how we handle that data and what we do with it, and issues such as trust, security and equity will top the agenda. But to understand what we can do, or hope to do with the data for the benefit of society, we can look to AI/analytics for insights to design technology and solutions for a brighter future. In kicking off this new series, we first asked our AI/Analytics leaders from around the world for a few words on their role and expectations.