32 International Companies Submit Applications to Manufacture Laptops in India

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September 1, 2023

32 international companies submit applications to manufacture laptops in India — Image Credits: Bestpart

IT minister Ashwini Vaishnav said on Wednesday that at least 32 foreign electronics companies have submitted applications to India‘s incentives programme to manufacture laptops, tablets, and servers in the country. The announcement comes weeks after the government put restrictions on laptop imports.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell Technologies, Asus, Acer, and Lenovo are among the businesses that have filed to manufacture laptops and other products in India. The “Make in India” initiative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration seeks to increase domestic manufacturing capacity. As a result of the restrictions, a number of foreign corporations are either establishing their own facilities or forming joint ventures with Indian businesses.

According to Ashwini Vaishnaw, the applications were submitted by the electronics industries under the country’s $2 billion production-linked incentive (PLI) programme for information technology hardwear. According to the minister, the PLI scheme for IT hardware is predicted to result in an additional investment of Rs. 24.3 billion and create 75,000 direct jobs.

The country’s trade regulator announced on August 5 that India will offer a transition time of roughly three months prior to the implementation of a new licensing scheme for the importation of laptops, tablets, and personal computers. This is a partial overturn of the sudden decision to enforce the licensing requirement with immediate effect, which had led to requests for a postponement.

The government stated in a notification that import consignments can be cleared without a license until 31 October and a government permit would be required for clearance of import from 1 November.

Google Announces India-Tuned Version of Generative AI-powered Search

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Sahil Pawar

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September 1, 2023

Google announced on Thursday that its generative AI-powered version of its flagship product, Search, has been optimized for India. Starting today, the platform, which will be made accessible as a pilot to any user who voluntarily agrees to participate in the trial, will offer a chatbot-like experience in place of the traditional search bar that has traditionally been associated with search engines.

Users will be able to do searches in both Hindi and English using the India-specific version of Google‘s AI-powered Search, known as Search Generative Experience (SGE), which will also enable voice input for search queries and readouts of search results.

Nearly four months after its global premiere, SGE is making its way to India. Google’s vice-president and general manager of Search, Elizabeth Reid, announced the launch of the updated Search on May 10.

“We’re once more reinventing what a search engine can achieve with fresh advancements in generative AI. In order to help you navigate and make sense of the information available, we can now answer queries of a completely new kind that you never imagined Search could address thanks to this potent new technology.” said Reid.

The news comes after Microsoft took the lead by launching a new version of its own search engine, Bing, powered by OpenAI’s large language model GPT-4. With the debut, Google, whose research group is credited with developing transformer models, the key technology underlying generative AI, lost ground in the generative AI competition. This announcement can be seen as Google’s attempt at catching up.

Entrepreneur Earns Thousands of Dollars within a Month by Teaching AI Skills

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Sahil Pawar

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September 1, 2023

entrepreneur earns thousands of dollars month teaching ai skills — Image Credits: Business Insider

A crucial point in the life of 32-year-old Cypriot entrepreneur Ole Lehmann occurred following the financial losses during the FTX crypto exchange crisis. He was unsure of what to do following the incident until he came across ChatGPT, an AI tool that has subsequently helped launch him into a lucrative profession as an educator. By instructing people in the use of AI, Lehmann is currently earning thousands of dollars.

Two weeks after the crypto meltdown, Lehmann found ChatGPT, which completely altered his life. It brought up recollections of his keen interest in cryptocurrencies. He acknowledged that he became enthusiastic about AI after realizing its potential.

Lehmann started extensively studying ChatGPT in January. In order to gauge audience interest, he started tweeting AI-related content on his own Twitter account concurrently. He developed his ChatGPT skills over the next months, as well as his knowledge of AI content.

In April, he introduced “The AI Solopreneur,” a dedicated Twitter account that offers advice to solo business owners on how to use AI to increase productivity. His posts, which included threads on AI prompts and productivity-boosting technologies, received millions of views and had a surprising increase in followers. He acquired 100,000 followers in just 65 days and launched the AI Solopreneurship newsletter.

Lehmann responded to the demand for knowledge about artificial intelligence methods as his following grew. This inspired him to create the “AI Audience Accelerator” course, with the goal of assisting solo business owners in utilizing AI for effective content marketing. The cost of the course began at about $179. His course received a startling 1,078 orders in less than a month, mostly from solo business owners, content creators, and crypto aficionados in their early 20s to mid-30s from the US and Canada. This quick success led to a spectacular gross revenue of US $176,885 for Lehmann.

Ole Lehmann continues to see the rising demand as the generative AI field takes the world by storm.

Amazon Web Services Acquires Startup Fig

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Sahil Pawar

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September 1, 2023

Amazon Web Services acquires startup Fig — Image Credits: Fig

A startup called Fig, which aims to give developers a better experience at the command line interface with tools like autocomplete and collaboration, has been acquired by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Brendan Falk, the chief executive of Fig, announced today that the firm and its employees would join Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon. The agreement’s terms weren’t made public.

According to Fig, even though programmers spend a lot of time in integrated development environments, which resemble text editors and are used to write and edit code, a lot of brute force configuration and setup occurs on the command line. It is a programme that directly transmits user commands, line by line, to an operating system for a computer.

The command line interface, in most cases, is far more austere than an editor, provides a less interactive user experience, and is more challenging to work with, says the startup. Users who utilize Fig’s autocomplete feature receive recommendations for the next set of commands or flags, which significantly lessens the stress on operators and developers who must finish such low-level tasks.

The fact that Amazon is interested in Fig’s product fits with the company’s developer-centric trend of offering platforms that spare software engineers and operations the responsibility of developing and deploying applications. Falk said that the ultimate objective of Amazon is to include artificial intelligence into more of its developer-focused products, and that Fig will be a part of that.

According to Falk, existing users will continue to be able to use Fig and will receive ongoing support. He continued by saying that as a result of the deal, consumers can now use first-tier “Fig Team” capabilities for free. However, as the company is concentrating on integrating with AWS, no new users can register.

Google’s Duet AI Now Available in Workspace Apps for $30 Per Month

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Sahil Pawar

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August 31, 2023

Google has announced that its Duet AI assistant would soon be available in all of its Workspace applications, including Gmail, Drive, Slides, Docs, and more.

According to the company, more than a million users have already tried out Google’s virtual assistant while the Duet technology has been in testing for some time. Anyone who has paid for Google Workspace apps will now receive it.

At its I/O developer conference earlier this year, Google unveiled Duet AI, promoting the set of features as a useful coworker in all of the Google apps. Users can instruct Duet to create a chart from the data in a spreadsheet or to convert Google Docs outline into a deck in Slides.

Users can also ask Duet to write an email answer, generate photos, or check grammar. It can be used as a helpful creative tool. Additionally, users may use it to summarize their documents, discover items in Drive, and more.

Duet AI can also refer to a variety of app-specific features. It entails AI-based adjustments to the lighting and audio of meetings in addition to automated meeting summaries in Google Meets. In Chat, it provides automatic summaries of lengthy threads, so users don’t have to read through it all.

Google will charge $30 per person for access to Duet for large organizations. Workspace’s Head Aparna Pappu said that Google hasn’t decided on pricing for smaller teams. The cost of Microsoft’s AI solution, Copilot, which has comparable features and is compatible with the majority of Office products, is the same.

US Copyright Office to Seek Public Comment on AI and Copyright Issues

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Sahil Pawar

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August 31, 2023

As the government considers how to grapple with AI technology, the US Copyright Office announced that it will begin taking public comments on AI and copyright issues. The government seeks to provide answers to three primary concerns, which were published in the Federal Register.

First is how AI models should use copyrighted data in training. Second is whether AI-generated content can be protected by copyright even without human involvement. And third, how copyright liability would function with AI.

The office also requests feedback on the cases where AI might infringe on publicity rights. However, it recognises that these are not copyright concerns. According to the Copyright Office, if AI mimics voices, likenesses, or artistic styles, it may have an influence on state-mandated publicity regulations and unfair competition legislation.

Written comments must be sent to the Copyright Office by October 18th, and responses on the other issues must be sent by November 15th.

Politicians, artists, authors, and even civil rights organizations are interested in the copyright status of AI training data and the output of generative AI tools, making this a viable pilot project for future AI legislation.

The Copyright Office states that over the past several years, it has begun to receive applications to register works containing AI-generated material. The office might take the remarks into consideration when deciding how much copyright to grant in the future.

After declining to allow Stephen Thaler rights to an image produced by an AI platform, the Copyright Office ended up involved in a legal dispute last year. A Washington DC, court sided with the US Copyright Office in the case earlier this month, ruling that no work can ever receive copyright without a human being participating.

DeepMind Announces SynthID Tool to Watermark AI-generated Images

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Sahil Pawar

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August 31, 2023

SynthID, a method to watermark AI-generated images for easy identification, has been introduced by Google’s AI division, DeepMind. The new tool, which embeds a digital watermark into an image’s pixels, was developed in collaboration with Google Cloud, according to a blog post by DeepMind.

The watermark can be used to identify images created by AI, although it won’t be visible to the human eye. The technology is now only available in beta to a select group of Vertex AI users who use Imagen, the company’s text-to-image model.

Images have a traditional watermark applied on top of them, typically in the form of transparent text or graphics. These techniques, however, have been shown to be ineffective at identifying AI images.

Since the watermark is invisible to the human eye, it will prevent it from detracting from the image. Two machine learning models are used by SynthID to recognise and watermark photos. The models assist it in identifying probable AI-generated content while also helping it visually align the watermark on the image. A wide variety of photos were used to train both models.

In a blog post, Google stated that being able to recognise AI-produced content is essential for giving users awareness of when they are interacting with created media and for preventing the spread of false information. SynthID is developed by Google DeepMind and refined in partnership with Google Research.

The blog says, “Google Cloud is the first cloud provider to offer a tool for creating AI-generated images responsibly and identifying them with confidence.” Although SynthID isn’t completely immune to extreme visual modifications, it does offer a technical solution that holds promise for enabling individuals and organizations to ethically use AI-generated content.

IBM CEO Urges India to Have Sovereign Capability in AI, Proposes National AI Computing Center

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Sahil Pawar

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August 30, 2023

Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM, stated that in order to keep up with the worldwide trend of rising investments in computing infrastructure due to rapid technological breakthroughs, India must create sovereign capabilities in artificial intelligence and consider establishing a national AI computing center.

“We had a very good discussion with Rajeev Chandrasekhar. I am a firm believer that every country ought to have some sovereign capability on artificial intelligence, including large language models, and generative AI,” Krishna said in an interview.

He explained the significance of this by saying that India might want to utilize it for purposes the rest of the world does not want to invest in, or for purposes one might not want to expose to the rest of the world. This implies that India requires both computer and data infrastructure, and the country needs a strategy to make use of that that is specific to India for both the government and commercial businesses, he added.

He claimed that India has the resources needed to accomplish this with an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars. The people who claim that you need $10 billion, in his opinion, are “hallucinating”.

Along with other prominent businessmen from around the world present at the B20 summit, including Brad Smith from Microsoft, Shantanu Narayen from Adobe, and Raj Subramaniam from FedEx, Krishna said the summit was a proud moment for India since it demonstrated its capacity to compete on the world stage in terms of growing AI technologies.

BRICS Alliance Announces a Study Committee Dedicated to AI

By

Sahil Pawar

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August 29, 2023

BRICS alliance announces study committee dedicated AI — Image Credits: Wikipedia

A study committee devoted to researching and assessing artificial intelligence has been officially constituted by the BRICS alliance. Chinese President Xi Jinping stated an intention to create a “AI study group” among the BRICS member countries during the BRICS summit, which was held in Johannesburg and brought together important developing economies Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

This initiative’s main goal is to constantly track and evaluate the development and evolution of AI technologies. It aims to encourage and promote innovation in the area of artificial intelligence throughout the BRICS alliance’s member nations. More details about the group will be released in the future.

The Chinese President stressed the importance of creating a strong framework for AI governance and standardization to increase the security, dependability, control, and equity of AI technology.

The President of the People’s Republic of China stressed the need of empowering the Study Group to reach its full potential during his speech at the 15th BRICS Summit. Additionally, he promoted the development of AI-related cooperation as well as increased information sharing and technology cooperation among the participating nations.

Other digital topics on the agenda included collaboration on remote sensing satellites, China’s plans to establish research and technology incubator, sustainable development, collaboration in digital education, and focus on digital economy.

OpenAI Announces ChatGPT Enterprise, a Business Edition of its AI Chatbot

By

Sahil Pawar

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August 29, 2023

OpenAI announces ChatGPT Enterprise — Image Credits: AD

The maker of the well-known ChatGPT AI chatbot, OpenAI, has released ChatGPT Enterprise, a version of the chatbot designed specifically for businesses.

ChatGPT Enterprise is made to assist organizations in automating processes, enhancing customer service, and producing original content. Built on OpenAI’s most advanced language model, GPT-4, it offers a number of features not found in ChatGPT’s consumer version.

Introducing ChatGPT Enterprise: enterprise-grade security, unlimited high-speed GPT-4 access, extended context windows, and much more. We’ll be onboarding as many enterprises as possible over the next few weeks. Learn more: https://t.co/lU3ErLtBmT pic.twitter.com/lhixa4IXlc
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) August 28, 2023

These features include enterprise-grade security and privacy, unlimited faster GPT-4 access, and longer context windows for handling inputs that are four times as long. As soon as they are available, the company will provide additional features like extensive data analysis capabilities and availability for all team sizes.

According to OpenAI, several businesses, including Block, Zapier, Canva, and The Estée Lauder Cos., already use ChatGPT Enterprise. The company anticipates that businesses of all sizes will show a significant interest in the product.

“We are announcing the release of ChatGPT Enterprise, which provides enterprise-grade protection and anonymity, limitless higher-speed GPT-4 access, extended context windows for processing longer inputs, comprehensive data analysis capabilities, customization possibilities, and much more,” the blog reads.

After the announcement, Andrej Kaparthy took to Twitter to highlight the potential benefit of the same for large organisations. He tweeted, “Imo the productivity amplification here is so large that organizations should be thinking about it as a basic work tool, like a new kind of spreadsheets++, given out eagerly and by default.”

Imo the productivity amplification here is so large that organizations should be thinking about it as a basic work tool, like a new kind of spreadsheets++, given out eagerly and by default. https://t.co/M4xcAh4M99
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) August 28, 2023

There are already free and ChatGPT Plus options available. The Plus edition is $20 per person every month, while the Free version is free. The latter provides early access to beta features, enhanced data analysis, Plugins support, and GPT-4 access.

The latest text-generating model from OpenAI, GPT-4, was made generally available in July. GPT-4, which replaces GPT-3.5, is much more powerful than its forerunner. It can generate text, including codes, and receive inputs of both text and images, unlike GPT-3.5.