By ANI | Updated: 22 March 2023

The Gujarat government on Wednesday signed an important strategic Memorandum of Understanding with global technology major Google, through which they will jointly equip Gujarat’s rural women, school-going children and young entrepreneurs for socio-economic transformation through the use of information technology and internet access.

The memorandum was signed in the presence of Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel and Vijay Nehra, Secretary, Science Technology and Sanjay Gupta, Vice President and Country Head of Google.

Approximately fifty thousand people will be provided training every year.

“Not only this, training sessions will be organized to increase the capacity building-skill of children-students and youth along with increasing digital literacy among rural women,” a release said.

Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel said that Gujarat has a strong ICT (information and communications technology) infrastructure which has been developed due to the new IT and ITES Policy 2022-2027. The chief minister said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has brought the best in the world to Gujarat and the state government has realized it through various policy initiatives.

Gujarat CM also assured full support of the state government to Google to associate the name of Google with Gujarat and to ensure that Gujarat, which the CM termed as the growth engine of the country.

It is necessary to point out here that the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of Gujarat has signed 3 MoU with Google in the past and more than 10 thousand women, school children, young developers have benefited from these training programs.

On the occasion, Sanjay Gupta, Country Head and Vice President of Google, appreciated the overall development in the IT sector in the state and especially the activities of Science City.

He said that while Gujarat is a hub for young entrepreneurs, Google is eager to take the world by storm with this partnership with Gujarat.

Gupta called children and women as the foundation of a bright future and also said that IT has extended to the rural level in Gujarat will give a new direction to this strategic partnership.

By Reuters | Updated: 22 March 2023

Microsoft Corp on Tuesday rolled out an image-creation feature for search engine Bing and browser Edge that will use the technology behind OpenAI’s DALL-E to create pictures based on text prompts.

The tool, named ‘Bing Image Creator’, will be available to users of the latest AI-powered version of Bing and Edge preview.

Bing Image Creator will be integrated into Bing chat, rolling out initially in Creative mode starting Tuesday for users on desktop and mobile, Microsoft said in a blog post.

Companies large and small are locked in fierce competition to deploy software that could reshape how people work after a frenzy started with last year’s launch of ChatGPT, the OpenAI-owned chatbot sensation that showed the potential of so-called large language models.

At the center are Microsoft and Alphabet Inc’s Google, touting AI features for their most popular products from spreadsheet software Excel to Gmail.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft has sought to outpace peers through investments in OpenAI, which last week released GPT-4 that performs a range of tasks from creating a real website through a hand-drawn mock-up to helping individuals calculate their taxes.

The software giant also launched new features – Visual Stories and Knowledge Cards 2.0 – for Bing users. The features will use AI-generated graphics and more interactive elements such as charts and timelines to provide information and key facts at a glance.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

By Reuters | Updated: 22 March 2023

Alphabet Inc’s Google on Tuesday began the public release of its chatbot Bard, seeking users and feedback to gain ground on Microsoft Corp in a fast-moving race on artificial intelligence technology.

Starting in the U.S. and the U.K., consumers can join a waitlist for English-language access to Bard, a program previously open to approved testers only. Google describes Bard as an experiment allowing collaboration with generative AI, technology that relies on past data to create rather than identify content.

The release last year of ChatGPT, a chatbot from the Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI, has caused a sprint in the technology sector to put AI into more users’ hands. The hope is to reshape how people work and win business in the process.

Just last week, Google and Microsoft made a flurry of announcements on AI, two days apart. The companies are putting draft-writing technology into their word processors and other collaboration software, as well as marketing-related tools for web developers to build their own AI-based applications.

Asked whether competitive dynamics were behind Bard’s rollout, Jack Krawczyk, a senior product director, said Google was focused on users. Internal and external testers have turned to Bard for “boosting their productivity, accelerating their ideas, really fueling their curiosity,” he said.

In a demonstration of the site bard.google.com to Reuters, Krawczyk showed how the program produces blocks of text in an instant, different from how ChatGPT types out answers word by word.

Bard also included a feature showing three different versions or “drafts” of any given answer among which users could toggle, and it displayed a button stating “Google it,” should a user desire web results for a query.

Accuracy, however, is still a concern. “Bard will not always get it right,” a Google pop-up notice warned during the demo. Last month, a promotional video for Bard showed the program answering a question incorrectly, helping shave $100 billion off Alphabet’s market value.

Google highlighted a couple mistakes during this week’s demo to Reuters, for instance saying Bard wrongly claimed ferns required bright, indirect light in response to one query.

Bard also produced nine paragraphs of text when asked for four in another question. After that answer, Krawczyk clicked a thumbs-down feedback button in response.

“We know the limitations of the technology, and so we want to be very deliberate at the pace at which we roll this out,” he said.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

By Reuters | Updated: 21 March 2023

Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang is expected on Tuesday to disclose new artificial intelligence chips and technologies at the company’s annual conference for software developers.

Analysts will be watching for the Santa Clara, California-based company to give more details about how it plans to widen accessibility to processing power like to that used to develop fast-rising technologies such as the chatbot ChatGPT.

Last month, Huang told investors it would launch its own cloud computing service to offer more readily available access to large systems built with its chips.

At the Tuesday conference, he will discuss “what’s coming next” in AI, the company said on its website.

Nvidia has come to dominate the field for selling chips used to developing generative AI technologies, which can answer questions with human-like text or generate fresh images based on a text prompt.

Those new technologies rely on the use of thousands of Nvidia chips at once to train the AI systems on huge troves of data. Microsoft, for example, built a system with more than 10,000 Nvidia chips for startup company OpenAI to use in developing the technologies that underpin its wildly popular ChatGPT.

While Nvidia faces competition in the AI chip market from Advanced Micro Devices and several startup companies, the company has more than 80 percent of the market for chips used in training AI systems.

The boom in AI has helped drive Nvidia shares up 77 percent this year, compared with a rise of 11.5 percent in the Nasdaq Composite Index. With a market capitalization of $640 billion (roughly Rs. 52,86,784 crore), Nvidia has grown to become about five times more valuable than longtime rival Intel.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

By Press Trust of India | Updated: 21 March 2023

Just 24 percent of organisations surveyed in India have the ‘mature’ level of readiness needed to be resilient against modern cybersecurity risks, according to a new Cisco study released on Tuesday.

Cisco, in a separate announcement, said it aims to train 500,000 cybersecurity professionals over 3 years across India.

Cisco’s first-ever Cybersecurity Readiness Index highlighted where businesses are doing well and where cybersecurity readiness gaps will widen if global business and security leaders don’t take action.

Underlining that readiness is critical, the Cisco study revealed that 90 percent respondents said they expect a cybersecurity incident to disrupt their business in the next 12 to 24 months.

India scored high in the global chart in terms of maturity (24 percent), performing above the global average of 15 percent on cybersecurity readiness. About 38 percent of companies in India fall into the beginner or formative stages.

Conducted by an independent third party, the survey asked 6,700 private sector cybersecurity leaders across 27 markets to indicate which of the solutions they had deployed and the stage of deployment. Companies were then classified into four stages of increasing readiness — beginner, formative, progressive, and mature.

While beginner (overall score of less than 10) implies initial stages of deployment of solutions, formative (score between 11 – 44) have some level of deployment, but performing below average on cybersecurity readiness. In the index, progressive (score between 45 – 75) meant considerable level of deployment and performing above average on cybersecurity readiness, whereas mature (score of 76 and higher) have achieved advanced stages of deployment and are most ready to address security risks.

While organisations in India are faring better than the global average, the number is still very low, given the risks.

According to Cisco, this readiness gap is telling, not least because 90 per cent of respondents said they expect a cybersecurity incident to disrupt their business in the next 12 to 24 months.

The cost of being unprepared can be substantial as 80 percent of respondents said they had a cybersecurity incident in the last 12 months, and 53 percent of those affected said it cost them at least USD 500,000 (roughly Rs. 4 crore).

“Cybersecurity is a top priority for businesses as they continue their digitisation journey. With hybrid work becoming mainstay and services being application-driven, it is critical that organisations close the security readiness gap,” Samir Mishra, Director, Security Business Group, Cisco India and SAARC, said.

Business leaders must establish a baseline of ‘readiness’ across the five security pillars to build secure and resilient organisations. This need is especially critical given that 95 percent of the respondents plan to increase their security budgets by at least 10 percent over the next 12 months. By establishing a base, organisations can build on their strengths and prioritise the areas where they need more maturity and improve their resilience.

The five key pillars are identity, devices, network security, application workloads, and data.

Meanwhile, Cisco announced its goal to train 500,000 people across India with cybersecurity skills over the next 3 years.

This goal is part of Cisco’s 10-year ambition to empower 25 million people with digital skills worldwide through Cisco’s Networking Academy. The flagship programme is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. During this time, the programme has reached 17.5 million students across 190 countries. Since starting operations in India, it has trained 1.2 million students through 718 partnerships with educational institutions and organisations offering Networking Academy courses.

The two announcements were made at the Cisco India Summit (CIS) 2023 in Jaipur.

Cisco said the future of India’s growth and global competitiveness depends on building a strong digital economy which in turn relies on a digitally-skilled workforce.

“With the speed and scale of digitisation across the country, there will be an increased demand for skilled cybersecurity professionals as organisations look to defend themselves against an evolving and complex threat landscape,” Cisco said.

By Press Trust of India | Updated: 21 March 2023

The Punjab government on Tuesday extended the suspension of mobile internet and SMS services in Tarn Taran, Ferozepur, Moga, Sangrur and Amritsar’s Ajnala sub-division and a few areas in Mohali till Thursday noon.

The curbs will be lifted from the rest of the state from Tuesday noon, the department of home affairs and justice said in an order.

“… it is directed that all mobile internet services (2G/3G/45/5G/CDMA/GPRS), all SMS services (excluding banking and mobile recharge) and all dongle services provided on mobile networks, except the voice calls, in the territorial jurisdiction of Punjab shall continue to remain suspended from March 21 (12.00 hours) to March 23 (12.00 hours) only in the districts Tarn Taran, Ferozepur, Moga, Sangrur, sub-division Ajnala in Amritsar, areas adjoining YPS chowk and airport road, both in SAS Nagar in continuation of this office order no 1781 dated March 20 in the interest of public safety, to prevent any incitement to violence and to prevent any disturbance of peace and public order,” it read.

The order clarified that mobile internet services in all the remaining areas of the state should start functioning normally from 12 noon on March 21.

On Monday, Punjab government extended the suspension of mobile Internet and SMS services in the state till Tuesday noon as the hunt for alleged Khalistan sympathizer Amritpal Singh continued for the third day.

Notably, Broadband services are not being suspended so that banking facilities, hospital services and other essential services are not disrupted, said the order issued by the additional chief secretary of the home department.