5 Minutes Read

How much all-seeing AI surveillance is too much?

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

 Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

Summary

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.

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

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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

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

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index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95

Currency

Company Price Chng %Chng
Dollar-Rupee 73.3500 0.0000 0.00
Euro-Rupee 89.0980 0.0100 0.01
Pound-Rupee 103.6360 -0.0750 -0.07
Rupee-100 Yen 0.6734 -0.0003 -0.05
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Most people prefer robots as their bosses, says study

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

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Summary

According to a new study released by Oracle and Future WorkPlace, most of the people are ready to embrace and take orders at work from robots.

According to a new study released by Oracle and Future WorkPlace, most of the people are ready to embrace and take orders at work from robots, reported American business magazine Fast Company.

More than 1,300 employees and human resource leaders were required to vote for the study which found out that most people are looking forward to the technology soon.

The study said that 70 percent people are using some form of AI, with 6 percent of HR professionals and 24 percent of employees actively using it, reported the magazine.

The study said that 45 percent of employees believe it will bring down costs heavily.

Also, 51 percent are confused whether they would be able to adapt to the latest technology. 72 percent of the HR professionals complained that their organisations do not provide AI training program currently.

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

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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

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index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95

Currency

Company Price Chng %Chng
Dollar-Rupee 73.3500 0.0000 0.00
Euro-Rupee 89.0980 0.0100 0.01
Pound-Rupee 103.6360 -0.0750 -0.07
Rupee-100 Yen 0.6734 -0.0003 -0.05
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Machine learning may become a ubiquitous and fundamental enabling layer, says Benedict Evans

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

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Summary

The Silicon Valley genius Benedict Evans has taken up the task of finding answers to the above questions. Evans, formerly a tech analyst, is a partner at venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz or a16z as everyone calls it.

While its easy to say that machine learning is the Next Big Thing, there are still many unanswered questions around the technology.

Everyone in tech is struggling to find out what machine learning will mean for companies in the broader economy or what machine learning means for all the rest of us, and what important problems it might actually be able to solve.

The Silicon Valley genius Benedict Evans has taken up the task of finding answers to the above questions. Evans, formerly a tech analyst, is a partner at venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz or a16z as everyone calls it.

In his June 22 blogpost, Evans said that machine learning helps find patterns or structures in data that are implicit and probabilistic rather than explicit, that previously only people and not computers could find.

“They address a class of questions that were previously ‘hard for computers and easy for people’, or, perhaps more usefully, ‘hard for people to describe to computers’.”

Evans, who sports Harry Potter’s glasses and closely resembles Dustin Hoffman from The Graduate, takes the example of washing machines to elaborate on his point.

“Washing machines are robots, but they’re not ‘intelligent’. They don’t know what water or clothes are. Moreover, they’re not general purpose even in the narrow domain of washing – you can’t put dishes in a washing machine, nor clothes in a dishwasher”.

According to Evans, washing machines are just another kind of automation, no different conceptually to a conveyor belt or a pick-and-place machine.

“Equally, machine learning lets us solve classes of problem that computers could not usefully address before, but each of those problems will require a different implementation, and different data, a different route to market, and often a different company. Each of them is a piece of automation. Each of them is a washing machine.”

So what all can machine learning do?

  • Machine learning may deliver better results for questions we’re already asking about data we already have.
  • Machine learning lets us ask new questions of the data we already have. For example, a lawyer doing discovery might search for ‘angry’ emails, or ‘anxious’ or anomalous threads or clusters of documents, as well as doing keyword searches
  • Third, machine learning opens up new data types to analysis – computers could not really read audio, images or video before and now, increasingly, that will be possible.

At the end of the blog, Evans noted that today most of the companies are relying heavily on machine learning for their technological needs but they often ask one very similar question: What are the other things that this will enable, and what are the unknown unknowns that it will find?

“We’ve probably got ten to fifteen years before that starts getting boring,” wrote Evans.

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

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

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index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95

Currency

Company Price Chng %Chng
Dollar-Rupee 73.3500 0.0000 0.00
Euro-Rupee 89.0980 0.0100 0.01
Pound-Rupee 103.6360 -0.0750 -0.07
Rupee-100 Yen 0.6734 -0.0003 -0.05
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Microsoft brings AI-powered visual search to Bing

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

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Summary

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

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

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

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index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95

Currency

Company Price Chng %Chng
Dollar-Rupee 73.3500 0.0000 0.00
Euro-Rupee 89.0980 0.0100 0.01
Pound-Rupee 103.6360 -0.0750 -0.07
Rupee-100 Yen 0.6734 -0.0003 -0.05
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Google bars uses of its artificial intelligence tech in weapons

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

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Summary

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 …

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

 Daily Newsletter

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

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Oil Fluctuates as Traders Assess China’s Vow, Unrest in Libya

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index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95

Currency

Company Price Chng %Chng
Dollar-Rupee 73.3500 0.0000 0.00
Euro-Rupee 89.0980 0.0100 0.01
Pound-Rupee 103.6360 -0.0750 -0.07
Rupee-100 Yen 0.6734 -0.0003 -0.05
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Vistara creates India’s first robot ‘RADA’ for passenger services

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

 Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

Summary

Full-service carrier, Vistara, has created an artificial intelligence enabled robot named ‘RADA’ to assist travellers, address their queries and entertain them.

In a first in Indian airports, full-service carrier, Vistara, has created an artificial intelligence enabled robot named ‘RADA’ to assist travellers, address their queries and entertain them.

The robot will be placed at Vistara’s signature lounge at Delhi Airport’s Terminal 3 from July 5 to help customers using the lounge before they board their flights.

At present, the robot can scan the boarding passes, provide information on the terminal, departure gates, weather conditions of destination city, real time flight status as well as information about Vistara’s products and services, Vistara said.

RADA was designed with the help of technology experts from Tata Innovative Lab and with the support from students of reputed institutions, the company said.

“With RADA, we aim to change the way people interact and fly with an airline. We will be developing ‘RADA’ based on customer feedback and equipping it with the most effective features in the time to come,” Leslie Thng, Vistara’s Chief Executive Officer, said.

RADA is built on a chassis of four wheels, enabling it to rotate 360 degrees and it has three in-built cameras for cognitive interaction, Vistara added.

Vistara, is a joint venture between Tata Sons Limited and Singapore Airlines Limited (SIA).

Disclosure: Vistara is one of the four launch partners 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

 Daily Newsletter

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

Previous Article

Oil Fluctuates as Traders Assess China’s Vow, Unrest in Libya

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today's market

index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95

Currency

Company Price Chng %Chng
Dollar-Rupee 73.3500 0.0000 0.00
Euro-Rupee 89.0980 0.0100 0.01
Pound-Rupee 103.6360 -0.0750 -0.07
Rupee-100 Yen 0.6734 -0.0003 -0.05
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Why India needs AI to work for agriculture, healthcare and education

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

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Summary

The initial results in India are promising and if deployed at big scale, AI-based models can help farmers, doctors and educators keep building success stories.

While the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is making its presence felt across the spectrum globally, India needs to prioritise AI-based predictive analysis to improve outcomes in three core areas — agriculture, healthcare and education, a top Microsoft executive has emphasised.

The initial results in India are promising and if deployed at big scale, AI-based models can help farmers, doctors and educators keep building success stories, Joseph Sirosh, Corporate Vice President of Cloud AI Platform at Microsoft, told IANS here.

“For example, AI can help us foresee signs of a student being at risk of dropping out. We have done first such experiment in Andhra Pradesh involving thousands of students,” Sirosh informed.

In Visakhapatnam district, an application powered by Azure Cloud Machine Learning (ML) processed the data pertaining to all students — based on parameters such as gender, socio-economic demographics, academic performance, school infrastructure and teacher skills — to find predictive patterns.

The results showed that some of the factors leading to students dropping out were insufficient furniture, inadequate toilet infrastructure, etc.

Based on these results, the state government identified about 19,500 probable dropouts from government schools in Visakhapatnam district in the next academic year (2018-19).

“Not just India, AI-based predictive analysis has also helped Tacoma School District here in Washington state improve graduation rate from under 60 per cent to over 83 per cent by managing dropouts,” Sirosh noted.

When it comes to agriculture, Microsoft, in collaboration with the non-profit International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), has developed an AI-sowing app for farmers in India.

The tech giant is using AI and historic weather data to predict the best time for sowing seeds and other stages of the farming process, and pass on that information to farmers via SMS.

“We have done some amazing work, like informing farmers when to sow crops, what is the best time to plant crops during the year, etc. The result is 30 per cent more yield,” Sirosh told IANS.

The farmers do not need to install any sensors in their fields or incur any capital expenditure. All they need is a mobile phone capable of receiving text messages.

To determine the optimal sowing period, the Moisture Adequacy Index (MAI) is calculated. MAI is the standardised measure used for assessing the degree of adequacy of rainfall and soil moisture to meet the potential water requirement of crops.

The data then is downscaled to build predictability and guide farmers to pick the ideal sowing week.

According to Microsoft, ICRISAT has scaled sowing insights in 2018 to 4,000 farmers across Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka for the Kharif crop cycle (rainy season).

“We have made AI-based applications very simple for common people to comprehend. They don’t need to be tech-sophisticated. We have simplified the technology for the end-users,” Sirosh added.

The company has also developed a multi-variate agricultural commodity price forecasting model to predict future commodity arrival and the corresponding prices.

The model uses remote sensing data from geostationary satellite images to predict crop yields through every stage of farming.

According to the company, the model, currently being used to predict the prices of “tur” pulse, is scalable and can be generalised to other regions and crops.

On the health front, the Telangana government has adopted Microsoft Intelligent Network for Eyecare (MINE), which was developed in partnership with Hyderabad-based LV Prasad Eye Institute.

MINE uses ML and advanced analytics to predict regression rates for eye operations, enabling doctors to pinpoint the procedures needed to prevent and treat visual impairments.

“Under the MINE global consortium, we have built AI models that are very accurate for eyecare, especially for children,” Sirosh said.

The Telangana government is using Microsoft’s Cloud-based advanced analytics solution to screen children from birth to 18 years of age for major conditions affecting their health.

“We are also working hard to improve citizen services in India by creating user-friendly application programming interfaces (APIs) for enhanced speech recognition and translation solutions,” Sirosh added.

People are just starting to understand the power of AI-enabled Cloud in India.

“Our partners like TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant and Accenture are leaning in and adopting AI. These are exciting times for AI and its real adoption in the country,” Sirosh said.

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index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95

Currency

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Dollar-Rupee 73.3500 0.0000 0.00
Euro-Rupee 89.0980 0.0100 0.01
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The battle for artificial intelligence domination

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

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Summary

Everyone is not pessimistic about the rise of Artificial Intelligence. China, for example, is extremely gung-ho about the prospect.

Artificial Intelligence is the technology that is supposed to cause the most disruption to the way in which we live and work. At its most basic level, Artificial Intelligence is getting machines to think, act, and make decisions like human beings. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as

1: a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behaviour in computers

2: the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behaviour

In recent years, there has been much written about the impact of Artificial Intelligence on jobs, and society. At the core, is the great fear that machines, robots, enabled with AI will take away human jobs, making corporates more profitable, but leading to massive unemployment. Luminaries such as Bill Gates have proposed a tax on the use of robots with AI, to mitigate the impact of tax revenue losses by the state. For example, if a worker earned Rs 6 lakh per annum, and paid tax on it; the value of the tax on the robot would be the value paid by the human it replaced. This would ensure that state would continue to have a stream of taxes with which to undertake social welfare. It would also slow down the replacement of humans by machines. Or so goes the theory. Bill Gates is not the only tech billionaire to sound the warning cry on AI and jobs. Elon Musk believes that machines would be better than human beings, and job losses aren’t the worse things that can happen to humanity. Musk believes there should be regulation on the development and implementation of AI. Both Musk and Jeff Bezos sound warning bells on the use of AI in weaponry, or autonomous weapons.

The Big Believers

Everyone is not pessimistic about the rise of Artificial Intelligence. China, for example, is extremely gung-ho about the prospect. In a policy document released last year, China talks about the vision to dominate the field of AI by 2030.  They plan to build a 150-billion-dollar industry by this date and are investing heavily in Artificial Intelligence. About 22% of all patents filed worldwide, in Artificial Intelligence, are Chinese. Some of the things they are doing is extremely advanced and with immediate application. Their facial recognition systems, used for surveillance, take less than a second to recognise a face among millions.

In India, the Future of Jobs from 2017 has an almost cheerful outlook on Artificial Intelligence, and what they label Industry 4.0 technologies. It predicts that 9% of jobs in 2022 would be jobs that do not exist today, while 37% jobs will have radically different skill sets. But, where are the skills for this new market? And, what is the aim?

With the tech giants in the United States already dominating the Artificial Intelligence Space, and the Chinese Government seeming to put its considerable weight behind the country’s giant leap forward in the field of Artificial Intelligence, what are India’s priorities? and how does the Government of India ensure that these 9% jobs predicted, have people trained to deliver, and the 37% jobs that need ‘radically changed skill sets’ have people who have reskilled?

The Government of India had set up a task force to look at the broad area of Artificial Intelligence. The report acknowledges India’s lack of expertise in AI technologies, and fears that policy decisions may end up being a function of opinion rather than technical consensus. The report also calls for a thrust in AI in 10 separate domains from manufacturing, to healthcare delivery, from agriculture to defence, from PDS, to education. It also sees the collection, collation, and sharing of data as being a major issue, vis-à-vis privacy. Unlike the Chinese government that can trample on individual rights; the Government of India must work within a democratic framework, where individual rights are protected.

Rise of the Machines

And, in the years to come, this is what is going to define the battle for AI domination. How do countries, and companies that work in countries with citizens’ rights guaranteed, however flawed that guarantee maybe, compete with a nation and companies working in nations, with no safeguards for human rights? Can this battle be won keeping all those rights intact, or to compete do we handover our rights? After all, technology does not know international boundaries. How do you plan for tanks or missiles that are controlled by AI? For now, when we look at AI or robots enabled with AI, we see those cute things that make us smile. It doesn’t take much to convert a robot garbage picker into a robot that lays mines. The United Nations is worried enough about the potential of autonomous AI weaponry to start a conversation about it as well as call to discuss governance of AI and robotics.

Right now, it is the proverbial wild west. The question is whether AI should develop further before regulations kick in, or should regulations kick in before it is too late. The window of time is very small – and it might be better to have a broad agreement in place before Skynet takes over.

Harini Calamur works at the intersection of digital content, technology, and audiences.

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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

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

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index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95

Currency

Company Price Chng %Chng
Dollar-Rupee 73.3500 0.0000 0.00
Euro-Rupee 89.0980 0.0100 0.01
Pound-Rupee 103.6360 -0.0750 -0.07
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AI could smoothen your interactions with mobile service providers

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

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Summary

If you get frustrated at the very thought of connecting with your mobile service provider for the time it takes to complete an interaction, there is hope. A new Ericsson report on Monday said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation have the potential to solve such issues with minimal effort. Currently, it takes customers on …

If you get frustrated at the very thought of connecting with your mobile service provider for the time it takes to complete an interaction, there is hope. A new Ericsson report on Monday said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation have the potential to solve such issues with minimal effort.

Currently, it takes customers on average 2.2 attempts and 4.1 days to successfully complete an interaction with their mobile service providers, said the Ericsson “Consumer and IndustryLab” report.

For the study, titled “Zero Touch Customer Experience”, responses from approximately 7,000 online interviews with smartphone users aged 16 years and over across the globe were analysed.

The results showed that consumers expect telecom service providers to match leading digital consumer experiences.

More than half (56%) of the smartphone users expect operators to anticipate their needs even before they realise what they are, it said.

The new zero-touch methods, such as those used in voice-enabled home assistant devices such as Amazon Alexa, can do away with need of typing, clicking and swiping on our devices.

This is setting consumer expectations for interactions with companies, including telecom service providers, the report said.

“The zero-touch customer experience report shows that zero-touch experiences are now an expectation of their customers,” Pernilla Jonsson, Head of Ericsson Consumer and IndustryLab, said in a statement.

Today, smartphone users interact with operators across multiple touch points — from discovering offerings and signing up to services, to requesting support for ending a contract.

Consumers believe telecom service providers treat these touchpoints like they are isolated interactions.

The report highlights that mobile service providers can leapfrog to a zero-touch customer experience future by harnessing the power of AI and analytics.

Enabled by AI, telecom service providers could use data from earlier interactions and consumer behaviour to predict what consumers need before they even contact them for support.

“Telecom service providers could leapfrog one-click and move from multiple-click to zero-touch by deploying future technologies in their customer offerings,” Jonsson 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

 Daily Newsletter

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

Previous Article

Oil Fluctuates as Traders Assess China’s Vow, Unrest in Libya

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index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -72.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +28.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +30.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -14.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95
index Price Change
nifty 50 ₹16,986.00 -7.15
sensex ₹1,882.60 +8.30
nifty IT ₹2,206.80 +3.85
nifty bank ₹1,318.95 -1.95

Currency

Company Price Chng %Chng
Dollar-Rupee 73.3500 0.0000 0.00
Euro-Rupee 89.0980 0.0100 0.01
Pound-Rupee 103.6360 -0.0750 -0.07
Rupee-100 Yen 0.6734 -0.0003 -0.05
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