Sun co-founder sees a new dawn in machine learning

Silicon Valley billionaire of Indian origin and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla on Friday said that machine learning will exercise a major impact on business solutions in areas spanning healthcare to finance. 

In an interaction with Deccan Herald at a programme organised by his startup Khosla Labs and IT industry body Nasscom in Bangalore, Khosla said the impact of machine learning will usher in dramatic changes like innovative mobile technologies and related application development.

“I am not belittling the impact of the mobile. But machine learning will have greater impact on humanity in the next 20 years,”he said.

Asked about the startup ecosystem in the country, he said it is in an evolutionary stage and holds great promise in the years to come.

“We have to look at the startup ecosystem in the US and Europe where industry, academia and the student community are exchanging ideas and startups take advantage of this. If Cisco stumbles upon a startup with innovative solutions, they are ready to partner it and eventually integrate it into its development ecosystem. This kind of synergy is evolving in India,” he said.

Khosla also evinced keen interest in the government’s Aadhaar and digitisation projects. “I do believe that startups can play a greater role in bringing out solutions to citizen-centric problems facing the country,” he said.

On the disruptive technologies impacting society, Khosla said these technologies should be backed with appropriate regulatory mechanisms. 

“Technologies will bring dramatic changes in the business models and lives of human beings. And, regulation is necessary to gain maximum benefits from new technologies. Governments all over the world should follow this and help society evolve,” he said.

Slams Uber ban

Khosla,  one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems which created the Java programming language, criticised the government’s recent decision to ban Internet-based taxi aggregator Uber following the alleged rape incident in Delhi.

The venture capitalist also interacted with startup entrepreneurs and discussed broad areas which they could focus on. “Startup entrepreneurs should focus on their strong work areas and find solutions for the greater good of society,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Khosla met Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu in Hyderabad and evinced interest in collaborating on e-governance and technology projects in the state.

The Andhra Pradesh government has been working with Khosla Labs for developing innovative applications on ePOS (point of sale) devices in fair price shops.