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Tanmay Bakshi, 13, has published several apps and source code – he started coding at age 5 and built his first IOS app four years later. Image Credit: Supplied

Dubai: Thirteen-year-old Indian prodigy Tanmay Bakshi is on a mission to help young people learn coding to fill a growing need for skilled operators of Artificial Intelligence technology on emerging digital platforms.

The teenaged tech sensation spoke on Tuesday on the first day of the Knowledge Summit with a sense of urgency, noting that today’s young people will be the gatekeepers of tomorrow’s digital disruption as part of a larger Fourth Industrial Revolution.

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To help youth get there, the young software whizz kid is on a mission of sorts to coach 100,000 people to learn coding and to date has mentored more than 5,000 people, said the software content developer, author, and popular YouTube sensation with more than 150 videos and 155,900 subscribers.

App developer

Bakshi lives in Brampton, Canada, with his family who emigrated there in 2004 and has published several apps and source code – he started coding at age 5 and built his first IOS app four years later.

Featured in media articles around the globe, Bakshi is the youngest IBM Watson programmer.

“I had a great experience here at Knowledge Summit 2017, I just had my keynote a little while ago and it was all about what I am doing with Artificial Intelligence and how it is being used to impact fields like business, security and healthcare,” said Bakshi on the sidelines of the summit on Tuesday.

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“I did this with a few examples,” he said, such as “Tanmay Social Media Analyzer, which is a project that allows you to actually analyse social media sentiments and personality over tie, facial recognition, the cognitive story and much more.”

Bakshi said he was impressed with the Knowledge Summit and the warm welcome he received from a packed audience during his late afternoon speaking session at the Dubai World Trade Centre Rashid Hall 6.

He said that “in general, I love this event and the audience has been really great.”

Bakshi said he will make another appearance on the second and final day of the summit on Wednesday afternoon.

He said he will broach topics in a panel discussion “ about Artificial Intelligence [and] collaboration with humans.”