Last weekend, the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2024 proved to be the most special one, not least because the Hindustan Times you love is now 100 years strong. As it happens every time, this edition of HTLS was also host to some of the most interesting, relevant conversations about the times we live in and the issues we face. collectively. The technical conversation revolved around topics that will be of utmost importance over the next few years – artificial intelligence and its associated questions, data centers and supply chains, India’s role in the technological transformation and how soon artificial general intelligence (AGI) can come into play. Is. Potentially become a reality. I spoke to Revathi Advaithi, CEO of Flex Ltd., Professor Arvind Narayanan of Princeton University, and Dr. Manish Gupta, Senior Director, Google DeepMind.
I’ll give you the pleasure of reading the detailed conversations, and also watching the video stream (links to which are a few scrolls down), but one takeaway would be to highlight the idea that each of these speakers talked about in our conversation.
AI for broader good: “A farmer may be unable to get a loan from a bank, and hence have to pay a very high interest rate to the loan shop. They are unable to get insurance at a reasonable price and if their crops fail, they fall into debt trap. Our team took this approach of analyzing satellite imagery, which enabled us to create the first model that is now able to identify field boundaries and crops being grown, for the whole of India, through satellite imagery. It provides a foundational layer on which we can create a unique identity for each individual, and then on top of that, you can build a foundation stack, unified payments interface, and more. We can unlock all kinds of use cases for farmers, like loans, recent prices, stock insurance or supplementary programs for the government” – Dr. Manish Gupta, Senior Director – Research, Google DeepMind.
AI and Jobs: “My thesis is, AI is helpful to humans. Of course, the debate about whether AI takes away jobs is relevant for a company like ours that has a large employee base, but I think it’s somewhere in the middle. I think overall it will have a net zero impact in terms of employment. This is controversial because many people do not believe in it. This (debate) is about AGI that is going to replace humans. I think the productivity boost that AI will give will probably not directly reduce jobs, but rather redistribute them and skill the workforce as a whole” – Revathi Advaithi, CEO of Flex.
AI and regulation: “I think it is possible to regulate AI, and in thinking about it, we need to remember that AI is not just one thing. There are many types of AI. For example, there is AI that generates our social media feeds, and it has been blamed for a variety of problems, such as increasing polarization, enabling people to use social media to fan the flames of communal violence. , because these AI systems sometimes exceed the maximum. Divisive posts that are being shared online. For example, there is AI behind self-driving cars. So there are many types of AI, and when we think about all of these separately, and we think about regulation separately, I think it becomes a much more practical problem than just asking That’s how we can do AI regulation” – Professor Arvind Narayanan.
Detailed conversation from HTLS 2024, here…
Recalibrate?
As I write this on Tuesday morning, there are rumors that the United States Department of Justice may force Google to sell its Chrome browser product, and more significant unbundling within Android, because of the search monopoly. The next chapter of the results continues. I wrote about it my column a few weeks ago. But why Chrome? Regulators believe Google’s search monopoly is partly fueled by the Chrome browser, which has the highest market share worldwide and can therefore be used effectively to keep users within Google’s service ecosystem. Can be done from. It’s a similar story with Android and Google Play, but asking Google to sell Android can be much more complicated.
Who do you think could be the next owner of Google if it comes to it? A few names come to mind. Perhaps OpenAI, which recently clearly outlined plans for a search engine. Microsoft, because they can merge the Edge browser within Chrome (Edge’s underlying engine is similar to Chrome and maintains continuity specifically for Windows users. Apple? Not likely, as they have rated Safari among the most secure. have developed to make one (and it is a rare breed) web browsers of this generation and have shown no intention of making inroads into the Windows ecosystem with other services may always be a surprising selection, but the key It would be – Chrome itself not money Earns Google, and it won’t be for anyone who wants it unless they have a set of services that plug in seamlessly for them, and for users I have a left field option here. .
Air
Perhaps the time is not right to spend money on a cooling fan, at least if you live north of the Vindhyas. But still, fans haven’t been as smart as I’ve been talking about this week. The seasonal aspect I just mentioned, I will come back to in a moment. The NuUK Hello doesn’t try to make the case by complicating matters like Wi-Fi connectivity and smartphone controls, which only serves to confuse more senior members of the family. Instead, this Indian tech company has done well to focus on improving different elements of the experience – and to be fair, it has worked collectively.
The primary element of this proposal is the use of BLDC motors (or brushless direct current motors; there are 3 of them). These are made by a company called NIDEC Corporation. The collective effort of motor refinement and the way the NUUK Halo has been designed makes it the quietest fan of its kind. Even at speeds of 10 or 11, with a maximum of 12 (this in itself is rare, most such implementations stop at 10). According to the decibel meter on the Apple Watch, the Halo registers the faint whisper of a fan blowing gently at 21 decibels at fan speed 1 (this is about 3 feet away in a typical living room). At fan speed 5, it’s about 33 decibels – some of this will also be wind noise if you’re in direct line of sight. No fan, table or chair, smart or otherwise, has ever been so quiet.
It’s good that Wi-Fi connectivity in NYUK and everything else that follows is not complicated. Instead, it integrates a three-stage illumination lamp with finely diffused light. It’s not perfect for what kind of lighting you’ll be able to read a book in, but it serves the purpose. The company claims this is an element of Scandinavian design influence. Remember I mentioned the seasons earlier in our conversation? This is one fan that may find relevance even after summer. The 90-degree vertical oscillation and 120-degree horizontal oscillation means the Halo can be smartly positioned to enhance the air-conditioner’s cooling over longer periods of time or extend the scope of the heater’s effectiveness in winter.
If any further proof of the attention to detail was needed, it would be the remote control which has a sturdier construction than usual. It looks as if there is a silicone protective case around it, but there isn’t! This proposal with a fan is surprisingly more versatile than I imagined, and most other fans are ready for it. This is reassuring, because you will be separated from Rs 10,999 for this facility.
data
Now that the US elections are over, apparently a few more people have realized that they should try to move away from X or Twitter. I have some thoughts about the elusive quest that Real X alternate humanity is seeking, but I’ll leave that for another day. At the moment, BlueSky says they now have 15 million users, with 1 million people joining in the week since the election results were announced. One can assume that most of those signups are from the US. Now, BlueSky is trying to make its broader approach more attractive. “Many artists and creators have made their home on BlueSky, and we listen to their concerns about other platforms training on their data. “We do not use any of your content to train generative AI and have no intention of doing so,” the company said in a statement.
Assistant
Google Gemini, the AI assistant, is now available on iPhone as a standalone app. On iPhones, as opposed to integration within the Google app. Gemini’s push for iOS makes complete sense, so much so that you’ll wonder why Google didn’t do it sooner – there are a lot of iPhone users out there, and Gemini’s relevance has improved significantly. And since this is before Apple’s expected arrival of OpenAI’s GPT model as part of a more sophisticated Siri, it has a better chance of gaining traction and hopefully making it a habit across most of the demographic. There’s also Gemini Live, and Google is clearly not holding back. What’s interesting to note here is that, for example, Google has removed the iPhone checklist before making Gemini available on many of its platforms or devices, including Google TV, Android TV or smart displays.
