Tag: India

AI and the shift from opinion to effect


Here’s some things I’ve been clipping out and saving concerning AI. The pattern I see emerging in my clippings is one where I am less interested in opinion on AI and more interested in the effects of AI on the world. There’s still some good think pieces on AI — I put some here — but the use of AI is accelerating in the world and we need to better understand the outcomes of that.

AI Think Pieces: For people who want to be really afraid of AI, I recommend this Guardian piece on  unknown killer robots and AI and…. well you read and decide. On the flip side of that, here’s a good piece critical of  AI alarmism.

Bill Gates chimes in on how  the risks of AI are real but manageable. My friend Clive Thompson discusses a risk of a different sort regarding AI, and that is the possibility of AI model collapse.

The mystery of how AI actually works is delved into at Vox. To me it is one of the potentially big problems AI will have in the future.

Practical AI: here’s a piece on how the  Globe and Mail is using AI in the newsroom. Also practical: How AI is working in the world of world of watches. I loved this story of how AI is being used to translate cuneiform. AI is also being used to deal with forest fires.

AI effects: This piece is on how AI’s large language models are having a big effect on the Web as we know it. To mitigate tithings, the Grammys have outlined new rules for AI use.

when it comes to writing, I think the “Five Books” series is great. They will ask an expert in an area to recommend five books in their field that people should read. So I guess it makes sense that for books on  artificial intelligence, they asked….ChatGPT. It’s well worth a read.

Not all articles written by/with AI turn out great. Ask the folks at Gizmodo.

Speaking of AI and books,  these authors have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for unlawfully ingesting their books. Could be interesting. To add to that, the New York Times reports that “fed up with A.I. companies consuming online content without consent, fan fiction writers, actors, social media companies and news organizations are among those rebelling.”

On the topic of pushback,  China is setting out new rules concerning generative AI with an emphasis on “healthy” content and adherence to socialist values.

Asia is not a monolith, of course. Other parts of Asia have been less than keen to the EUs AI lobbying blitz. Indeed, India’s Infosys just signed a five year AI deal with 2bln target spend, and I expect lots of other India companies will be doing something similar regarding AI. Those companies have lots of smart and capable IT people, and when companies like Meta open their AI model for commercial use and throw the nascent market into flux, well, that is going to create more opportunities.

Finally, I suspect there is a lot of this going around: My Boss Won’t stop using ChatGPT.

 

 

Two interesting IT trends and one novel thing: iPhone 11s in India, Siemens doubles down on WFH, and you can run Windows 95 PC inside Minecraft and play Doom with it.

The good folks at itbusiness.ca have a podcast called Hashtag Trending and today they talked about two interesting IT trends and one novel thing: iPhone 11s in India; Windows 95 PC inside Minecraft; Siemens doubles down on WFH. Here’s an excerpt:

Apple is building iPhone 11s in southern India. The move comes as Apple has been looking to shift some of its manufacturing away from China amid US-China trade war and disruptions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Apple already assembles two other models in India — the iPhone XR and iPhone 7. ….

… A new modification has been created for the game Minecraft allowing players to order computer parts from a satellite orbiting around a Minecraft world and build a computer that actually runs Windows 95 and other operating systems. According to the Verge the mod uses VirtualBox, which is free and open-source virtual machine software, to run operating systems like Windows 95. All you have to do within Minecraft is place a PC case block and then use it to create virtual hard drives to install operating systems from ISO files.

And lastly, Reuters is reporting that German conglomerate Siemens says it’s going to allow employees to “work from anywhere” for two or three days a week, and focus on “outcomes” rather than time spent in the office. Days after the recent announcement, the company says it was giving its over 100,000 employees access to a new app that provides local data on the COVID-19 situation, shows office occupancy levels and acts as a contact tracing tool. This of course is just the latest enterprise announcing its intentions for the post-COVID-world, following in the footsteps of Twitter, Facebook, OpenText and others, which have made their own announcements around remote work for employees moving forward.

It’s really remarkable how much thought provoking stuff is jammed in here. I find itbusiness.ca a good way to keep up with IT business news, regardless of what country you live in. Worth subscribing too for sure.

New parts of the world will become uninhabitable for humans


I think this will become true, and not just in India: Are parts of India becoming too hot for humans? – CNN.

Already we have parts of the world barely inhabitable due to extreme weather. Think of Antartica on one hand, and the Sahara desert on the other. Soon places in India will join them. Other parts will become inhabitable for different reasons: extreme weather and flooding.

 

Two interesting pieces on UBI (universal basic income)

There have been many articles written on UBI. (If you don’t know what it is, it’s  universal basic income: a cash payment made to every individual in the country).

Two of the more interesting ones I’ve read are here: The UBI already exists for the 1% – Medium, and this one here (on how India is looking to do it).

UBI is coming. It may take some time though.