Meet 13-year-old Tanmay Bakshi, kid genius and IBM Watson programmer

At the age of five he started coding. When he was nine, he released his first iOS app in Apple’s App Store…And now at the age of 13, Tanmay Bakshi is working with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and has his very own business card.

He is currently a force to be reckoned with in the world of programming and spoke to former New Zealand cricketer, Mark Richardson and hosts of The AM Show, Duncan Garner and Amanda Gillies, during a trip in New Zealand.

On their website, the show asks their fan base if this is actually “the AM Show’s Smartest Ever Guest?” And many are saying well, yes, he is.

Turns out Tanmay is not your average teenager and is currently being home-schooled. He likes to call himself a “software and cognitive developer, an algorithm-ist, a keynote speaker, author and of course an IBM champion for Cloud and Honorary IBM Cloud Adviser.”

When asked how he feels about Artificial Intelligence and AI taking over the world, he says that AI is not being developed to replace humans, but instead it’s been, and is being, developed to augment our lives and amplify our skills.

“Artificial intelligence was developed and is continuing to be developed for the sole purpose of augmenting our lives, and amplifying our skills or capabilities in what we do everyday.”

(Not that the presenters understood what he said, so they just offer him a golf ball instead.)

Mark Richardson doesn't understand the answer so offers the kid a golf ball.

This is a thing that has happened and we need to accept it. pic.twitter.com/Yyq5yBuAK6

— Vithushan Ehantharajah (@Vitu_E) October 23, 2017

The Canadian also spoke about his YouTube channel, Tanmay Teaches, which boosts around 120k subscribers at the moment and is a platform that he hopes will help children and other beginners on their journey to innovate through coding.

When asked to explain what exactly IBM Watson is, he says it is a “cognitive system that allows developers to incorporate cognitive and machine learning into their applications without actually having to code in the intelligence.”

Tanmay is working closely with Darwin Ecosystem to do just that – incorporate IBM Watson into business software systems. He’s currently also working on a project called The Cognitive Story – a research project with a mission to help the profoundly disabled communicate through EEG signals and AI.

And when he’s not being the smartest kid ever and touring the world, he’s just trying to have a normal childhood.

In conversation with, ABC News his mother, Sumita said:

“He’s very happy being a child, so that’s how we knew he loves what he’s doing but at the same time he is in that age mentally,” she said.

“I mean, he’s gifted, obviously, he knows more than what his friends know, but that’s separate. He’s kept that separate. I don’t know how, but he’s done that.”

*Reports of Tanmay hired to work at Google has been making rounds on social media, although nothing has been confirmed.