Tag: AI

Microsoft calls to regulate face recognition technology

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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At a time when facial recognition technology is fast becoming a part of our lives, Microsoft has become the first tech giant to initiate a call for regulations to limit the technology that can be used for mass surveillance affecting civil liberties.

In a blog post on Friday, Microsoft President Brad Smith said a government initiative to regulate the proper use of facial recognition technology is the need of the hour.

“We believe US Congress should create a bipartisan expert commission to assess the best way to regulate the use of facial recognition technology in the US,” Smith said.

The purpose of such a commission “should include advice to Congress on what types of new laws and regulations are needed, as well as stronger practices to ensure proper congressional oversight of this technology across the executive branch”, the Microsoft President noted.

Several tech companies, including Microsoft, have utilised face-recognition technology in the past several years to turn time-consuming work to catalog photos into something both instantaneous and useful.

However, Microsoft has already rejected requests to deploy the technology in situations involving “human rights risks”, Smith informed.

Smith earlier called for a new digital Geneva Convention that commits governments to defend and protecting civilians from state-sponsored cyber-attacks.

“We live in a nation of laws, and the government needs to play an important role in regulating facial recognition technology.

“A world with vigorous regulation of products that are useful but potentially troubling is better than a world devoid of legal standards,” Smith suggested.

The computer-assisted facial recognition can recognise people’s faces from a photo or through a camera.

This technology can catalog your photos, help reunite families or potentially be misused and abused by private companies and public authorities alike.

“Facial recognition technology raises issues that go to the heart of fundamental human rights protections like privacy and freedom of expression,” Smith wrote.

In recent weeks, a group of Amazon employees objected to its contract with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while reiterating concerns raised by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) about law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology.

IT company Salesforce’s employees have raised the same issues related to immigration authorities and these agencies’ use of their products.

“Demands increasingly are surfacing for tech companies to limit the way government agencies use facial recognition and other technology,” Smith said.

The only effective way to manage the use of technology by a government is for the government proactively to manage this use itself, the Microsoft President added.

Issues relating to facial recognition go well beyond the borders of the US and “it requires active engagement by governments, academics, tech companies and civil society internationally”.

“As we move forward, we’re committed to establishing a transparent set of principles for facial recognition technology that we will share with the public,” Smith informed.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Nasscom hosts summit on big data analytics in Bengaluru

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Indian IT industry’s apex body Nasscom on Wednesday unveiled the 6th edition of its Big Data and Analytics here to highlight their disruptive role in development of AI (artificial intelligence) worldwide.

“The two-day event hosted leaders conferring to the paradigm shift from being an industry-wide disruptor to business-as-usual witnessed by India Inc,” said the National Association of Indian Software and Services (Nasscom).

With “Democratising AI” as the theme, the summit had experts brainstorm on the integration of newer technologies like AI, machine learning and design thinking into business models.

“Data science and AI technologies allows harnessing complex, high volume, high speed data into insights for decision making, emerging as the one of biggest growth opportunities for India to capitalise on,” said Nasscom vice chairman Keshav Murugesh at the summit.

As new digital economies straddle across industries, there is demand for AI-based servers and computing capabilities. The capacity of workers to master these new skills and availability of talent will be key driver of competitiveness in the big data and analytics industry.

The participants also focused on embedding AI into business processes (back office), supply chain application, data protection in the age of AI and man-machine interface.

The industry body identified six areas of specialization, spanning business analysts, solution architects, data architects, analysts and scientists, in the big data analytics domain which are expected to be key to sectors growth.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Google ‘Launchpad Accelerator’ India chapter to nurture Indian startups

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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In a bid to nurture Indian startups working in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), Google on Tuesday announced to open the India chapter of its global “Launchpad Accelerator” mentorship programme.

The three-month “Launchpad Accelerator” India programme has been designed to grow the AI/ML ecosystem by helping Indian startups build scalable solutions for the country’s unique problems.

The programme, based out of Bengaluru, will provide a cohort of 8-10 Indian startups mentorship and support from the best of Google in AI/ML, Cloud, UX, Android, web, product strategy and marketing, along with up to $100K of Google Cloud credits, the company said in a statement.

“India has the appetite to build entrepreneurs of the future and we are proud to announce a focused programme for the next wave of Indian entrepreneurs, who are using new technologies to solve the country’s needs,” said Roy Glasberg, Global Launchpad Founder.

Over the years, Google has worked with some incredible startups across India who are using advanced technologies such as AI/ML to tackle everything from agri-tech to language web, healthcare and transportation.

“With the dedicated India-only Launchpad Accelerator programme, we will be able to build a bridge between startups and the industry ecosystem and support them to drive innovation in the India market,” Glasberg added.

Applications for the first class is open till July 31 and the first class will start in September 2018.

In an effort to mentor emerging start-ups, Google India hosted a four-day boot camp for the first 10 Indian startups as part of its ‘Solve for India’ programme.

The India-focused accelerator programme is building on Google’s “Solve for India” roadshow from last year.

Ten Indian startups were shortlisted from across India which underwent four days in one-on-one consults with experts from Google and mentors from the industry to solve critical product and growth challenges.

“We shortlisted 10 startups from 160 home-grown start-ups by travelling across 15 cities in India, and are now ready to scale this pilot as a dedicated programme for India,” Karthik Padmanabhan, developer relations lead, Google India, said at that time.

The participants were the founders of startups including Nebulaa, Slang Labs, PregBuddy, LegalDesk, PaySack, Vokal, FarMart, Meesho, Pratilipi and M-Indicator.

“Launchpad” regional accelerators are tailored specifically to their local markets, helping startups build great products, Google said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

India needs to reskill workforce for AI, says Kris Gopalakrishnan

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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With new technologies disrupting businesses and changing the rules of engagement, India faces a daunting task to reskill its huge workforce for Artificial Intelligence (AI), Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan says.

“India has a major challenge of transitioning its young workforce to the fourth industrial revolution called AI after the eras of agriculture, manufacturing and services,” Gopalakrishnan told IANS in an interview here.

Gopalakrishnan, 63, well-known as ‘Kris’, is one of the seven co-founders of the iconic IT firm, who became its chief executive after fellow co-founder Nandan Nilekani quit in mid-2009 to set up the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for issuing Aadhaar cards to over a billion citizens.

“As the large workforce is engaged in diverse occupations such as agriculture, manufacturing and white-collar jobs in the services sector, it needs to be re-skilled to sustain the jobs, as AI will replace traditional jobs,” said Gopalakrishnan.

Originating in the mid-1950s as an academic discipline, AI involves machines emulating human intelligence. Many experts like American aerospace firm SpaceX founder Elon Musk and renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, however, feared that AI would spell doom by replacing humans as thinking machines.

As a geek, Gopalakrishnan allayed unknown fears of AI, terming it as a transition none can avoid but adopt in due course.

“AI is a transition that is bound to happen, whether we like it or not. We should rather think of preparing the workforce for it by reskilling it. We have to brace for skilled jobs, as many conventional jobs will be lost though many more will be created in allied areas,” he pointed out.

Golalakrishnan, however, refused to answer any questions on Infosys’ developments in the field of AI, even as the software giant has been working on the technology through its platforms like Nia over the past few years.

Though use of robots in the automobile industry led to the loss of painting jobs in assembly lines of car plants, Gopalakrishnan said on the flip side, they saved the blue-collar workforce from the harmful exposure to chemical paints.

Hawking (1942-2018), had termed the emergence of AI as the worst event in the history of civilisation and urged its propounders to find ways to control its development.

Participating in a web summit technology conference at Lisbon in Portugal on November 6, 2017, Hawking said computers could, in theory, exceed human intelligence (HI).

“Unless we learn how to prepare for, and avoid, the potential risks, AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilisation. It brings dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new ways for the few to oppress the many. It could bring great disruption to our economy,” Hawking asserted.

Echoing Hawking, Telsa co-founder Musk charged that AI was more dangerous than nuclear warheads and called for a regulatory authority to oversee its development as super intelligence.

“The biggest issue I see with so-called AI experts is they think they know more than they do, and they think they are smarter than they actually are,” said Musk at a tech conference at Austin in Texas on March 12, as reported in the US media.

Countering the likes of Hawking and Musk, Gopalakrishnan said there was no simple solution with disruptive technologies but to adopt them to sustain and thrive.

“If we don’t prepare as a country to re-skill our people for an AI-led future, there will be social unrest because their jobs will become redundant,” he reiterated.

Unfazed by partial opposition to AI, Gopalakrishnan was passionate about AI for the immense benefits he saw in it.

“As in every technology, risks are inherent even in AI, though I see a bright future in its adoption. Through AI in key areas like healthcare, we can reduce the cost of technology to improve the quality of life,” he affirmed.

Key sectors such as health, education and transportation will be impacted by AI, with machine intelligence reducing labour and redundant activities.

“AI is reaching the critical stage of consumerisation, becoming a technology for our daily use. It can create opportunities to spur growth,” Gopalakrishnan claimed.

In this context, Gopalakrishnan, chairman of India Inc apex body CII’s innovation cell, clarified that the industry, academia and the government have to share the responsibility of getting the workforce prepared for AI-led jobs.

“The preparedness should begin with training undergraduate students on AI by including it in their courses,” he added.

In a technology-driven world, Gopalakrishnan said India’s policies have to strike a balance between protecting an individual’s privacy and promoting the tech medium.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Millennial Indian parents trust AI for diagnoses, treatments, says study

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Over 80% of millennial parents in India believe that artificial intelligence (AI)-based medical technologies will eradicate cancer, finds a survey.

The survey, led by global technical professional organisation IEEE, illuminates how millennial parents in India, with Generation Alpha children (eight years old or younger), think growing up with health- and medical-related AI technology will impact the lives of their children.

It showed that 83% of Indian parents are likely to use an AI chatbot to diagnose their sick child in the future, while nearly 80% agreed to robots powered by AI to conduct surgery on their Generation Alpha children.

Generation Alpha, born from 2010-2025, is considered by many to be the most tech-infused demographic, and AI technologies are expected to infiltrate nearly every aspect of their lives.

The survey, titled “Generation Alpha Trend Watch: Babies Wearing AI Health Trackers”, showed that nearly 90% of parents were overwhelmingly confident that AI will make real-time, round-the-clock monitoring and data tracking of their health, including AI-powered reminders for medicine, exercise and doctor’s visits.

Over 80 per cent of parents agreed of being comfortable exposing their kids to technologies such as facial recognition software and machine learning, technologies that helping clinicians diagnose rare diseases by analysing patient photos and correlating detected irregularities with rare genetic diseases.

Morever, more than half of parents said they would trust doctors that base their recommendations on data coming from AI to make life or death decisions regarding their children.

Conversely, less than one out of 10 parents in India (5%) disagreed with this, the survey showed.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Google’s AI voice assistant ‘Duplex’ to run a call centre?

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Google’s voice-calling “Duplex”, which lets Artificial Intelligence (AI) mimic a human voice to make appointments and book tables through phone calls, may soon enter call-centres assisting humans with customer queries.

According to a report in The Information late on Thursday, an unnamed insurance company has shown interest in “Duplex” which could “handle simple and repetitive customer calls” before taking help from a human if the conversation gets complicated.

Google, however, said in a statement that the company is not testing “Duplex” with any enterprise clients.

“We’re currently focused on consumer use cases for the ‘Duplex’ technology and we aren’t testing ‘Duplex’ with any enterprise clients,” a Google spokesperson told Engadget in a statement.

“‘Duplex’ is designed to operate in very specific use cases, and currently we’re focused on testing with restaurant reservations, hair salon booking and holiday hours with a limited set of trusted testers,” the company added.

At its annual developer conference in May, Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai introduced “Duplex” and demonstrated how the AI system could book an appointment at a salon and a table at a restaurant.

In the demo, the Google Assistant sounded like a human.

It used Google DeepMind’s new “WaveNet” audio-generation technique and other advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) to replicate human speech patterns.

However, tech critics raised questions on the morality of the technology, saying it was developed without proper oversight or regulation.

Microsoft has showcased a similar technology it has been testing in China.

At an AI event in London in May, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that the company’s “Xiaoice” social chat bot has 500 million “friends” and more than 16 channels for Chinese users to interact with it through WeChat and other popular messaging services.

“Xiaoice” interacts in text conversations but now the company has started allowing the chat bot to call people on their phones.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

How much all-seeing AI surveillance is too much?

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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When a CIA-backed venture capital fund took an interest in Rana el Kaliouby’s face-scanning technology for detecting emotions, the computer scientist and her colleagues did some soul-searching — and then turned down the money.

“We’re not interested in applications where you’re spying on people,” said el Kaliouby, the chief executive officer and co-founder of the Boston startup Affectiva. The company has trained its artificial intelligence systems to recognize if individuals are happy or sad, tired or angry, using a photographic repository of more than 6 million faces.

Recent advances in AI-powered computer vision have accelerated the race for self-driving cars and powered the increasingly sophisticated photo-tagging features found on Facebook and Google. But as these prying AI “eyes” find new applications in store checkout lines, police body cameras and war zones, the tech companies developing them are struggling to balance business opportunities with difficult moral decisions that could turn off customers or their own workers.

El Kaliouby said it’s not hard to imagine using real-time face recognition to pick up on dishonesty — or, in the hands of an authoritarian regime, to monitor reaction to political speech in order to root out dissent. But the small firm, which spun off from an MIT research lab, has set limits on what it will do.

The company has shunned “any security, airport, even lie detection stuff,” el Kaliouby said. Instead, Affectiva has partnered with automakers trying to help tired-looking drivers stay awake, and with consumer brands that want to know if people respond to a product with joy or disgust.

Such queasiness reflects new qualms about the capabilities and possible abuses of all-seeing, always watching AI camera systems — even as authorities are growing more eager to use them.

In the immediate aftermath of Thursday’s deadly shooting at a newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, police said they turned to face recognition to identify the uncooperative suspect. They did so by tapping a state database that includes mug shots of past arrestees and, more controversially, everyone who registered for a Maryland driver’s license.

Initial information given to law enforcement authorities said that police had turned to facial recognition because the suspect had damaged his fingerprints in an apparent attempt to avoid identification. That report turned out to be incorrect and police said they used facial recognition because of delays in getting fingerprint identification.

In June, Orlando International Airport announced plans to require face-identification scans of passengers on all arriving and departing international flights by the end of this year. Several other US airports have already been using such scans for some, but not all, departing international flights.

Chinese firms and municipalities are already using intelligent cameras to shame jaywalkers in real time and to surveil ethnic minorities , subjecting some to detention and political indoctrination. Closer to home, the overhead cameras and sensors in Amazon’s new cashier-less store in Seattle aim to make shoplifting obsolete by tracking every item shoppers pick up and put back down.

Concerns over the technology can shake even the largest tech firms. Google, for instance, recently said it will exit a defense contract after employees protested the military application of the company’s AI technology. The work involved computer analysis of drone video footage from Iraq and other conflict zones.

Similar concerns about government contracts have stirred up internal discord at Amazonand Microsoft. Google has since published AI guidelines emphasizing uses that are “socially beneficial” and that avoid “unfair bias.”

Amazon, however, has so far deflected growing pressure from employees and privacy advocates to halt Rekognition, a powerful face-recognition tool it sells to police departments and other government agencies.

Saying no to some work, of course, usually means someone else will do it. The drone-footage project involving Google, dubbed Project Maven, aimed to speed the job of looking for “patterns of life, things that are suspicious, indications of potential attacks,” said Robert Work, a former top Pentagon official who launched the project in 2017.

While it hurts to lose Google because they are “very, very good at it,” Work said, other companies will continue those efforts.

Commercial and government interest in computer vision has exploded since breakthroughs earlier in this decade using a brain-like “neural network” to recognize objects in images. Training computers to identify cats in YouTube videos was an early challenge in 2012. Now, Google has a smartphone app that can tell you which breed.

A major research meeting — the annual Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, held in Salt Lake City in June — has transformed from a sleepy academic gathering of “nerdy people” to a gold rush business expo attracting big companies and government agencies, said Michael Brown, a computer scientist at Toronto’s York University and a conference organizer.

Brown said researchers have been offered high-paying jobs on the spot. But few of the thousands of technical papers submitted to the meeting address broader public concerns about privacy, bias or other ethical dilemmas. “We’re probably not having as much discussion as we should,” he said.

Startups are forging their own paths. Brian Brackeen, the CEO of Miami-based facial recognition software company Kairos, has set a blanket policy against selling the technology to law enforcement or for government surveillance, arguing in a recent essaythat it “opens the door for gross misconduct by the morally corrupt.”

Boston-based startup Neurala, by contrast, is building software for Motorola that will help police-worn body cameras find a person in a crowd based on what they’re wearing and what they look like. CEO Max Versace said that “AI is a mirror of the society,” so the company only chooses principled partners.

“We are not part of that totalitarian, Orwellian scheme,” he said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Microsoft brings AI-powered visual search to Bing

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Aiming to take on Google’s image recognition mobile app, Microsoft has launched a new “visual search” function for Bing which lets users click a picture of something with their mobile phone to search for it online.

“Today we’re launching new intelligent ‘Visual Search’ capabilities that build upon the visual technology already in Bing so you can search the web using your camera. Now you can search, shop and learn more about your world through the photos you take,” the Bing team wrote in a blog post late on Friday.

The feature looks very similar to Google Lens that was announced during Google I/O 2017 conference.

It brings offerings seen from third parties that leverage the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to perform quick and accurate object recognition on photographs.

“Imagine you see a landmark or flower and want to learn more. Simply take a photo using one of the apps, or upload a picture from your camera roll. Bing will identify the object in question and give you more information by providing additional links to explore,” the company added.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Google bars uses of its artificial intelligence tech in weapons

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Google will not allow its artificial intelligence software to be used in weapons or unreasonable surveillance efforts under new standards for its business decisions in the nascent field, the Alphabet Inc unit said on Thursday.

The restriction could help Google management defuse months of protest by thousands of employees against the company’s work with the US military to identify objects in drone video.

Google instead will seek government contracts in areas such as cybersecurity, military recruitment and search and rescue, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said in a blog post on Thursday.

“We want to be clear that while we are not developing AI for use in weapons, we will continue our work with governments and the military in many other areas,” he said.

Breakthroughs in the cost and performance of advanced computers have carried AI from research labs into industries such as defence and health in the last couple of years. Google and its big technology rivals have become leading sellers of AI tools, which enable computers to review large datasets to make predictions and identify patterns and anomalies faster than humans could.

But the potential of AI systems to pinpoint drone strikes better than military specialists or identify dissidents from mass collection of online communications has sparked concerns among academic ethicists and Google employees.

A Google official, requesting anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue, said the company would not have joined the drone project last year had the principles already been in place. The work comes too close to weaponry, even though the focus is on non-offensive tasks, the official said on Thursday.

Google plans to honour its commitment to the project through next March, a person familiar with the matter said last week. More than 4,600 employees petitioned Google to cancel the deal sooner, with at least 13 employees resigning in recent weeks in an expression of concern.

A nine-employee committee drafted the AI principles, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.

The Google official described the principles as a template that any software developer could put into immediate use. Though Microsoft Corp and others released AI guidelines earlier, the AI community has followed Google’s efforts closely because of the internal pushback against the drone deal.

Google’s principles say it will not pursue AI applications intended to cause physical injury, that tie into surveillance “violating internationally accepted norms of human rights,” or that present greater “material risk of harm” than countervailing benefits.

“The clear statement that they won’t facilitate violence or totalitarian surveillance is meaningful,” University of Washington technology law professor Ryan Calo tweeted on Thursday.

Google also called on employees and customers developing AI “to avoid unjust impacts on people,” particularly around race, gender, sexual orientation and political or religious belief.

The company recommended that developers avoid launching AI programs likely to cause significant damage if attacked by hackers because existing security mechanisms are unreliable.

Pichai said Google reserved the right to block applications that violated its principles. The Google official acknowledged that enforcement would be difficult because the company cannot track each use of its tools, some of which can be downloaded free of charge and used privately.

Google’s decision to restrict military work has inspired criticism from members of Congress. Representative Pete King, a New York Republican, tweeted on Thursday that Google not seeking to extend the drone deal “is a defeat for US national security.”

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Reliance Jio to launch AI, starts hiring under Akash Ambani, says report

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Reliance Jio has begun the hiring process for its AI team under Akash Ambani, reported Mint.

The firm has already started the recruitment process for its Bengaluru based AI team and is looking out for people who can work on machine learning and blockchain, the report said.

“Reliance Jio has hired a few senior people who will build this team…the company wants to set up this team in either Bengaluru or Hyderabad…. Akash Ambani is taking keen interest in this and is expected to lead this initiative,”  the report said citing unidentified source.

The development comes as the company is attempting to expand its already sizeable footmark in the telecom sector, the daily said, adding that the push towards AI comes at a time when its rivals in the market are making concrete steps in the same direction.

“Recognising patterns where large numbers are involved is the core of Artificial Intelligence. Reliance Jio could use it to figure out how best to run a network, deploy capacity, what to bundle, which services to target across regions, among others. Artificial intelligence can also help a telco better monetise usage of data on its pipe and strategise its content push,” a sector expert was quoted saying in the report.

Last month, Reliance Jio launched ‘JioInteract’, an artificial intelligence-based platform for movie promotion and brand engagement.

Disclosure: Reliance Industries, the promoter of Reliance Jio, also controls Network18, the parent company of CNBCTV18.com.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow