Alorica, a company in Irvine, California, that runs customer-service centers around the world, has introduced an artificial intelligence translation tool that lets its representatives talk with customers who speak 200 different languages and 75 dialects.

So an Alorica representative who speaks, say, only Spanish can field a complaint about a balky printer or an incorrect bank statement from a Cantonese speaker in Hong Kong. Alorica wouldn’t need to hire a rep who speaks Cantonese.

Such is the power of AI. And, potentially, the threat: Perhaps companies won’t need as many employees — and will slash some jobs — if chatbots can handle the workload instead. But the thing is, Alorica isn’t cutting jobs. It’s still hiring aggressively.

The experience at Alorica — and at other companies, including furniture retailer IKEA — suggests that AI may not prove to be the job killer that many people fear. Instead, the technology might turn out to be more like breakthroughs of the past — the steam engine, electricity, the internet: That is, eliminate some jobs while creating others. And probably making workers more productive in general, to the eventual benefit of themselves, their employers and the economy.

Nick Bunker, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said he thinks AI “will affect many, many jobs — maybe every job indirectly to some extent. But I don’t think it’s going to lead to, say, mass unemployment. We have seen other big technological events in our history, and those didn’t lead to a large rise in unemployment. Technology destroys but also creates. There will be new jobs that come about.’’

At its core, artificial intelligence empowers machines to perform tasks previously thought to require human intelligence. The technology has existed in early versions for decades, having emerged with a problem-solving computer program, the Logic Theorist, built in the 1950s at what’s now Carnegie Mellon University. More recently, think of voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. Or IBM’s chess-playing computer, Deep Blue, which managed to beat the world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

AI burst into public consciousness in 2022 when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, the generative AI tool that can conduct conversations, write computer code, compose music, craft essays and supply endless streams of information. The arrival of generative AI has raised worries that chatbots will replace freelance writers, editors, coders, telemarketers, customer service reps, paralegals and many more.

“AI is going to eliminate a lot of current jobs, and this is going to change the way that a lot of current jobs function,” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said in a discussion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May.

Yet the widespread assumption that AI chatbots will inevitably replace service workers, the way physical robots took many factory and warehouse jobs, isn’t becoming reality in any widespread way — not yet, anyway. And maybe it never will.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers said last month that it found “little evidence that AI will negatively impact overall employment.’’ The advisers noted that history shows technology typically makes companies more productive, speeding economic growth and creating new types of jobs in unexpected ways.

They cited a study this year led by David Autor, a leading MIT economist: It concluded that 60% of the jobs Americans held in 2018 didn’t even exist in 1940, having been created by technologies that emerged only later.

The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks job cuts, said it has yet to see much evidence of layoffs that can be attributed to labor-saving AI.

“I don’t think we’ve started seeing companies saying they’ve saved lots of money or cut jobs they no longer need because of this,’’ said Andy Challenger, who leads the firm’s sales team. “That may come in the future. But it hasn’t played out yet.’’

At the same time, the fear that AI poses a serious threat to some categories of jobs isn’t unfounded.

Consider Suumit Shah, an Indian entrepreneur who caused a uproar last year by boasting that he had replaced 90% of his customer support staff with a chatbot named Lina. The move at Shah’s company, Dukaan, which helps customers set up e-commerce sites, shrank the response time to an inquiry from 1 minute, 44 seconds to “instant.” It also cut the typical time needed to resolve problems from more than two hours to just over three minutes.

“It’s all about AI’s ability to handle complex queries with precision,” Mr. Shah said by email. The cost of providing customer support, he said, fell by 85%.

“Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely,’’ Mr. hah posted on X.

Dukaan has expanded its use of AI to sales and analytics. “The tools,” Mr. Shah said, “keep growing more powerful.”

“It’s like upgrading from a Corolla to a Tesla,” he said. “What used to take hours now takes minutes. And the accuracy is on a whole new level.”

Similarly, researchers at Harvard Business School, the German Institute for Economic Research and London’s Imperial College Business School found in a study last year that job postings for writers, coders and artists tumbled within eight months of the arrival of ChatGPT.

A 2023 study by researchers at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University concluded that telemarketers and teachers of English and foreign languages held the jobs most exposed to ChatGPT-like language models. But being exposed to AI doesn’t necessarily mean losing your job to it. AI can also do the drudge work, freeing up people to do more creative tasks.

The Swedish furniture retailer IKEA, for example, introduced a customer-service chatbot in 2021 to handle simple inquiries. Instead of cutting jobs, IKEA retrained 8,500 customer-service workers to handle such tasks as advising customers on interior design and fielding complicated customer calls.

Chatbots can also be deployed to make workers more efficient, complementing their work rather than eliminating it. A study by Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford University and Danielle Li and Lindsey Raymond of MIT tracked 5,200 customer-support agents at a Fortune 500 company who used a generative AI-based assistant. The AI tool provided valuable suggestions for handling customers. It also supplied links to relevant internal documents.

Those who used the chatbot, the study found, proved 14% more productive than colleagues who didn’t. They handled more calls and completed them faster. The biggest productivity gains — 34% — came from the least-experienced, least-skilled workers.

At an Alorica call center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, one customer-service rep had been struggling to gain access to the information she needed to quickly handle calls. After Alorica trained her to use AI tools, her “handle time’’ — how long it takes to resolve customer calls — fell in four months by an average of 14 minutes a call to just over seven minutes.

Over a period of six months, the AI tools helped one group of 850 Alorica reps reduce their average handle time to six minutes, from just over eight minutes. They can now field 10 calls an hour instead of eight — an additional 16 calls in an eight-hour day.

Alorica agents can use AI tools to quickly access information about the customers who call in — to check their order history, say, or determine whether they had called earlier and hung up in frustration.

Suppose, said Mike Clifton, Alorica’s co-CEO, a customer complains that she received the wrong product. The agent can “hit replace, and the product will be there tomorrow,” he said. ” ‘Anything else I can help you with? No?’ Click. Done. Thirty seconds in and out.’’

Now the company is beginning to use its Real-time Voice Language Translation tool, which lets customers and Alorica agents speak and hear each other in their own languages.

“It allows (Alorica reps) to handle every call they get,” said Rene Paiz, a vice president of customer service. “I don’t have to hire externally’’ just to find someone who speaks a specific language.

Yet Alorica isn’t cutting jobs. It continues to seek hires — increasingly, those who are comfortable with new technology.

“We are still actively hiring,’’ Ms. Paiz says. “We have a lot that needs to be done out there.’’

Alorica, a company in Irvine, California, that runs customer-service centers around the world, has introduced an artificial intelligence translation tool that lets its representatives talk with customers who speak 200 different languages and 75 dialects.

So an Alorica representative who speaks, say, only Spanish can field a complaint about a balky printer or an incorrect bank statement from a Cantonese speaker in Hong Kong. Alorica wouldn’t need to hire a rep who speaks Cantonese.

Such is the power of AI. And, potentially, the threat: Perhaps companies won’t need as many employees — and will slash some jobs — if chatbots can handle the workload instead. But the thing is, Alorica isn’t cutting jobs. It’s still hiring aggressively.

The experience at Alorica — and at other companies, including furniture retailer IKEA — suggests that AI may not prove to be the job killer that many people fear. Instead, the technology might turn out to be more like breakthroughs of the past — the steam engine, electricity, the internet: That is, eliminate some jobs while creating others. And probably making workers more productive in general, to the eventual benefit of themselves, their employers and the economy.

Nick Bunker, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said he thinks AI “will affect many, many jobs — maybe every job indirectly to some extent. But I don’t think it’s going to lead to, say, mass unemployment. We have seen other big technological events in our history, and those didn’t lead to a large rise in unemployment. Technology destroys but also creates. There will be new jobs that come about.’’

At its core, artificial intelligence empowers machines to perform tasks previously thought to require human intelligence. The technology has existed in early versions for decades, having emerged with a problem-solving computer program, the Logic Theorist, built in the 1950s at what’s now Carnegie Mellon University. More recently, think of voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. Or IBM’s chess-playing computer, Deep Blue, which managed to beat the world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

AI burst into public consciousness in 2022 when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, the generative AI tool that can conduct conversations, write computer code, compose music, craft essays and supply endless streams of information. The arrival of generative AI has raised worries that chatbots will replace freelance writers, editors, coders, telemarketers, customer service reps, paralegals and many more.

“AI is going to eliminate a lot of current jobs, and this is going to change the way that a lot of current jobs function,” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said in a discussion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May.

Yet the widespread assumption that AI chatbots will inevitably replace service workers, the way physical robots took many factory and warehouse jobs, isn’t becoming reality in any widespread way — not yet, anyway. And maybe it never will.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers said last month that it found “little evidence that AI will negatively impact overall employment.’’ The advisers noted that history shows technology typically makes companies more productive, speeding economic growth and creating new types of jobs in unexpected ways.

They cited a study this year led by David Autor, a leading MIT economist: It concluded that 60% of the jobs Americans held in 2018 didn’t even exist in 1940, having been created by technologies that emerged only later.

The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks job cuts, said it has yet to see much evidence of layoffs that can be attributed to labor-saving AI.

“I don’t think we’ve started seeing companies saying they’ve saved lots of money or cut jobs they no longer need because of this,’’ said Andy Challenger, who leads the firm’s sales team. “That may come in the future. But it hasn’t played out yet.’’

At the same time, the fear that AI poses a serious threat to some categories of jobs isn’t unfounded.

Consider Suumit Shah, an Indian entrepreneur who caused a uproar last year by boasting that he had replaced 90% of his customer support staff with a chatbot named Lina. The move at Shah’s company, Dukaan, which helps customers set up e-commerce sites, shrank the response time to an inquiry from 1 minute, 44 seconds to “instant.” It also cut the typical time needed to resolve problems from more than two hours to just over three minutes.

“It’s all about AI’s ability to handle complex queries with precision,” Mr. Shah said by email. The cost of providing customer support, he said, fell by 85%.

“Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely,’’ Mr. hah posted on X.

Dukaan has expanded its use of AI to sales and analytics. “The tools,” Mr. Shah said, “keep growing more powerful.”

“It’s like upgrading from a Corolla to a Tesla,” he said. “What used to take hours now takes minutes. And the accuracy is on a whole new level.”

Similarly, researchers at Harvard Business School, the German Institute for Economic Research and London’s Imperial College Business School found in a study last year that job postings for writers, coders and artists tumbled within eight months of the arrival of ChatGPT.

A 2023 study by researchers at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University concluded that telemarketers and teachers of English and foreign languages held the jobs most exposed to ChatGPT-like language models. But being exposed to AI doesn’t necessarily mean losing your job to it. AI can also do the drudge work, freeing up people to do more creative tasks.

The Swedish furniture retailer IKEA, for example, introduced a customer-service chatbot in 2021 to handle simple inquiries. Instead of cutting jobs, IKEA retrained 8,500 customer-service workers to handle such tasks as advising customers on interior design and fielding complicated customer calls.

Chatbots can also be deployed to make workers more efficient, complementing their work rather than eliminating it. A study by Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford University and Danielle Li and Lindsey Raymond of MIT tracked 5,200 customer-support agents at a Fortune 500 company who used a generative AI-based assistant. The AI tool provided valuable suggestions for handling customers. It also supplied links to relevant internal documents.

Those who used the chatbot, the study found, proved 14% more productive than colleagues who didn’t. They handled more calls and completed them faster. The biggest productivity gains — 34% — came from the least-experienced, least-skilled workers.

At an Alorica call center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, one customer-service rep had been struggling to gain access to the information she needed to quickly handle calls. After Alorica trained her to use AI tools, her “handle time’’ — how long it takes to resolve customer calls — fell in four months by an average of 14 minutes a call to just over seven minutes.

Over a period of six months, the AI tools helped one group of 850 Alorica reps reduce their average handle time to six minutes, from just over eight minutes. They can now field 10 calls an hour instead of eight — an additional 16 calls in an eight-hour day.

Alorica agents can use AI tools to quickly access information about the customers who call in — to check their order history, say, or determine whether they had called earlier and hung up in frustration.

Suppose, said Mike Clifton, Alorica’s co-CEO, a customer complains that she received the wrong product. The agent can “hit replace, and the product will be there tomorrow,” he said. ” ‘Anything else I can help you with? No?’ Click. Done. Thirty seconds in and out.’’

Now the company is beginning to use its Real-time Voice Language Translation tool, which lets customers and Alorica agents speak and hear each other in their own languages.

“It allows (Alorica reps) to handle every call they get,” said Rene Paiz, a vice president of customer service. “I don’t have to hire externally’’ just to find someone who speaks a specific language.

Yet Alorica isn’t cutting jobs. It continues to seek hires — increasingly, those who are comfortable with new technology.

“We are still actively hiring,’’ Ms. Paiz says. “We have a lot that needs to be done out there.’’

San Francisco:

California legislators are set to vote on a bill as soon as this week that would broadly regulate how artificial intelligence is developed and deployed in California even as a number of tech giants have voiced broad opposition.

Here is background on the bill, known as SB 1047, and why it has faced backlash from Silicon Valley technologists and some lawmakers:

WHAT DOES THE BILL DO?

Advanced by State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat, the proposal would mandate safety testing for many of the most advanced AI models that cost more than $100 million to develop or those that require a defined amount of computing power. Developers of AI software operating in the state would also need to outline methods for turning off the AI models if they go awry, effectively a kill switch.

The bill would also give the state attorney general the power to sue if developers are not compliant, particularly in the event of an ongoing threat, such as the AI taking over government systems like the power grid.

As well, the bill would require developers to hire third-party auditors to assess their safety practices and provide additional protections to whistleblowers speaking out against AI abuses.

WHAT HAVE LAWMAKERS SAID?

SB 1047 has already passed the state Senate by a 32-1 vote. Last week it passed the state Assembly appropriations committee, setting up a vote by the full Assembly. If it passes by the end of the legislative session on Aug. 31, it would advance to Governor Gavin Newsom to sign or veto by Sept. 30.

Wiener, who represents San Francisco, home to OpenAI and many of the startups developing the powerful software, has said legislation is necessary to protect the public before advances in AI become either unwieldy or uncontrollable.

However, a group of California Congressional Democrats oppose the bill, including San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi; Ro Khanna, whose congressional district encompasses much of Silicon Valley; and Zoe Lofgren, from San Jose.

Pelosi this week called SB 1047 ill-informed and said it may cause more harm than good. In an open letter last week, the Democrats said the bill could drive developers from the state and threaten so-called open-source AI models, which rely on code that is freely available for anyone to use or modify.

WHAT DO TECH LEADERS SAY?

Tech companies developing AI – which can respond to prompts with fully formed text, images or audio as well as run repetitive tasks with minimal intervention – have called for stronger guardrails for AI’s deployment. They have cited risks that the software could one day evade human intervention and cause cyberattacks, among other concerns. But they also largely balked at SB 1047.

Wiener revised the bill to appease tech companies, relying in part on input from AI startup Anthropic – backed by Amazon and Alphabet. Among other changes, he eliminated the creation of a government AI oversight committee.

Wiener also took out criminal penalties for perjury, though civil suits may still be brought.

Alphabet’s Google and Meta have expressed concerns in letters to Wiener. Meta said the bill threatens to make the state unfavorable to AI development and deployment. The Facebook parent’s chief scientist, Yann LeCun, in a July X post called the bill potentially harmful to research efforts.

OpenAI, whose ChatGPT is credited with accelerating the frenzy over AI since its broad release in late 2022, has said AI should be regulated by the federal government and that SB 1047 creates an uncertain legal environment.

Of particular concern is the potential for the bill to apply to open-source AI models. Many technologists believe open-source models are important for creating less risky AI applications more quickly, but Meta and others have fretted that they could be held responsible for policing open-source models if the bill passes. Wiener has said he supports open-source models and one of the recent amendments to the bill raised the standard for which open-sourced models are covered under its provisions.

The bill also has its backers in the technology sector. Geoffrey Hinton, widely credited as a “godfather of AI,” former OpenAI employee Daniel Kokotajlo and researcher Yoshua Bengio have said they support the bill.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

After several customers complained about artificial intelligence- (AI) generated food and dish images on Zomato, CEO Deepinder Goyal on Sunday announced plans to remove such pictures from the platform.

The AI images of dishes on the food delivery giant were intended to add visual appeal to the food and also enhance the presentation of dishes.

However, taking to X, Mr Goyal said he has “received numerous complaints about these misleading images”.

This, he said, not only “leads to breach of trust between customers and restaurants” but also “increased refunds and lower customer ratings”.

“At Zomato, we use various forms of AI, to make our workflows efficient. However, one place where we strongly discourage the use of AI is images for dishes in restaurant menus,” Mr Goyal said.

“We urge our restaurant partners to avoid using AI for dish images in restaurant menus from now onwards,” the CEO said, adding that the platform “will actively start removing such images from menus by the end of this month”.

At Zomato, we use various forms of AI, to make our workflows efficient.

However, one place where we strongly discourage the use of AI is images for dishes in restaurant menus. AI-generated food/dish images are misleading, and we have received numerous customer complaints on this… pic.twitter.com/XXgSDGr6Aj

— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) August 18, 2024

Last year, Zomato introduced PicNic AI (Picture Nicely AI) — a tool to boost the visual presentation of food images on its platform — to assist restaurant partners in upgrading their basic food images effortlessly.

Mr Goyal further noted that Zomato will also “stop accepting AI-generated dish images (as much as we can detect them using automation)”.

He called on both restaurant owners and in-house marketing team “to stop using AI-generated images for marketing purposes”.

At the same time, he encouraged restaurant partners to invest in real food photography from Zomato for free of cost.

“Restaurant owners – if you haven’t yet invested in real food shots for your menu, please reach out to our catalogue support team, to schedule a photoshoot”.

“This is offered to you as a pass-through cost; Zomato doesn’t make any money as part of this process,” Mr Goyal said.

Meanwhile, the online food aggregator recently reported a 74 per cent growth (year-on-year) in revenue to Rs. 4,206 crore in Q1 FY25.

It posted over 126 per cent growth in net profit to reach Rs. 253 crore in the April-June quarter (Q1 FY25), from Rs. 2 crore in net profit in the same quarter last year.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

A New York based AI research company that focuses on biotechnology has generated a novel protein using a Protein Language Model (ProLLMs) that works on the similar transformer architecture as that of ChatGPT. 

EvolutionaryScale unveiled a first of its kind AI generated new protein molecule that glows- mimicking the bioluminescence of a jellyfish molecule called green fluorescent protein- on 25 June. The novel protein sequence is significantly different (less than 60 percent resemblance) to the natural protein: a difference dubbed to be possible “over 500 million years of (natural) evolution” by the company. 

The company used its frontier AI language model called EvolutionaryScale Model-3 (ESM3) to achieve this feat and secured 142 million dollars in a seed funding round for the same, including investments from industry giants like Nvidia and Amazon.

We are thrilled to be partnering with AWS and NVIDIA to push the frontier of AI for the life sciences.

— EvolutionaryScale (@EvoscaleAI) June 25, 2024

The ESM3 differs from ChatGPT as it is trained on parameters (internal variables) of three fundamental biological properties of proteins – sequence, structure and functions. The model was trained on 98 billion parameters, making it the biggest biological AI model till date. 

EvolutionaryScale dubs this as a “model trained across all of evolution.” The training set comprised 2.78 billion natural proteins, ranging from “the Amazon rainforest, to the depths of ocean, extreme environments like hydrothermal vents, and microbes in a handful of soil.”

ESM3 lets users generate proteins, using prompts with partial information (sequence, structure, and function keywords) and iterating the model to make predictions until the entire sequence is completed. The model is primarily meant for scientists and gives them unprecedented control over the process of generating proteins.

We have trained ESM3 and we’re excited to introduce EvolutionaryScale.

ESM3 is a generative language model for programming biology. In experiments, we found ESM3 can simulate 500M years of evolution to generate new fluorescent proteins.

Read more: https://t.co/iAC3lkj0iVpic.twitter.com/AhWtC4vxlF

— Alex Rives (@alexrives) June 25, 2024

EvolutionaryScale states their objective is to make biology programmable. “ESM3 takes a step towards the future where AI is a tool to engineer biology from first principles in the same way we engineer structures, machines and microchips, and write computer programs,” states the company website. 

The application of this technology can lead to breakthroughs in multiple fields like drug discovery and development, biomedical research as well as sustainability- an example of which is already demonstrated by EvolutionaryScale by showcasing a protein prototype that is capable of degrading plastic waste. 

The possibilities are endless, with every cell in every organism containing ribosomes (protein complexes that are responsible for protein synthesis). However, there have also been concerns that AI might be misused for creating biological weapons. 

Scientists have taken a proactive approach and laid down “Community Values, Guiding Principles, and Commitments for the Responsible Development of AI for Protein Design” in March, seeking to guide the developments in this domain for the betterment of humanity.

We’re advancing a new global agreement signed by 100+ leading scientists to ensure AI technologies for protein design are developed responsibly. This field can deliver medicines, vaccines, and other innovations that benefit all. https://t.co/pTlFtBWHNhhttps://t.co/XYn986dEAt

— Institute for Protein Design (@UWproteindesign) March 8, 2024

 
EvolutionaryScale has also been praised by experts for releasing a smaller open-source version for others to use freely. The large-scale complete model has not been released, although the training process of the same has been made public, in an attempt to remain transparent and share the technology freely.
 

Studies have identified that 18 elephant routes exist between Tamil Nadu and Kerala
| Photo Credit: ANI

The elephant population in India stands at 25,000 to 30,000, earning the species an “endangered” status. Their range today is estimated to be only 3.5% of what it was earlier, being restricted to the Himalayan foothills, the northeast, some forests of central India, and hilly forests of Western and Eastern Ghats.

Of particular concern is the fragmentation of their habitat: small, forested areas providing sustenance for elephants, interspersed with human-developed landscapes. Fragmentation can also lead to restricted breeding choices. This creates genetic bottlenecks and, in the long term, a reduction in the fitness of the herds.

Frequent movement of elephants between their habitable zones brings them into contact with roads and railway lines. The range of a female elephant covers about 500 sq. km, and traveling over so much distance in the age of fragmented habitats makes a road or railway crossing very likely.

Fortunately, not all elephant tracks pose these hazards. The elephants of Bandipur, Mudumalai and Wayanad go on a seasonal summer migration. They head for the Kabini Dam backwaters for both water and green grass. Studies have identified that 18 elephant routes exist between Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Wildlife corridors are a solution — these managed lands allow for migration with minimal human contact. One good example is the Motichur-Chilla corridor in Uttarakhand, which allows the flow of elephant genes between the Corbett and the Rajaji National Parks. However, there is always the risk of conflict with humans, with elephants occasionally feasting on crops, or crossing roads and railway tracks.

Train speed

In a Canadian study attempting to mitigate animal-train collisions, train-triggered warning systems comprising flashing lights and bell sounds were installed at various locations along the tracks. These signals activated 30 seconds before train arrival, were aimed at conditioning animals to associate the warnings with approaching trains.

Cameras recorded animal responses to trains with and without warning signals, on both straight and curved tracks. Large animals, such as elks (from the deer family) and grizzly bears left the tracks about 10 seconds before the train arrived when there was no warning system, and about 17 seconds before the train arrived when warning bells and lights were deployed (Transportation Research, vol 87, 2020).

The response to an approaching train is less in curved sections of the track, probably due to reduced visibility. In such places, sound is used by animals. However, the ability to hear an approaching train is significantly influenced by factors such as high train speed.

AI methods

When should an engine driver reduce speed when passing through forests that are elephant habitats? The Indian Railways has a vast network of optical fiber cables. These support telecommunications and carry data, and importantly transmit signals for train control. In a recently introduced system called Gajraj, geophonic sensors on these OFC lines are tuned to pick up the vibrations of the deep and resonant footsteps of passing elephants.

This AI-based intrusion detection system analyses data from the sensors, extracting relevant features such as frequency components and duration of vibration. If elephant-specific vibrations are detected, an alert is promptly sent to locomotive drivers in the area, and train speeds are reduced. The system is now operational in the Alipurduar area of north West Bengal, which has been the site of several tragic accidents in the past.

(The article was written in collaboration with Sushil Chandani, who works in molecular modelling)

New Delhi:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released an Artificial Intelligence Preparedness Index (AIPI) Dashboard on their website on Tuesday, tracking 174 economies globally for AI readiness.   

The Index has categorised each country into Advanced Economy (AE), Emerging Market Economy (EM), and Low-Income Country (LIC). Singapore (0.80), Denmark (0.78), and the United States (0.77) are among the highest-rated AEs, with India categorised as an EM with a 0.49 rating. India ranks 72 in a total of 174 countries, with Bangladesh (0.38) on 113, Sri Lanka (0.43) on 92, and China (0.63) on 31.     

The rating for each country is given based on the assessment of readiness in four key areas – digital infrastructure, human capital and labour market policies, innovation and economic integration, and regulation.

Earlier this year, the IMF published a blog based on their research paper on 14 January, stating that AI could endanger 33 percent of jobs in AEs, 24 percent in EMs, and 18 percent in LICs. Overall, 40 percent of the jobs around the world will be affected by AI, replacing some and complimenting others.

“On the brighter side, it also brings enormous potential to enhance the productivity of existing jobs for which AI can be a complementary tool and to create new jobs and even new industries,” says Economist Giovanni Melina, in the IMF article from Tuesday.

“Under most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality, a troubling trend that policymakers can work to prevent. To this end, the dashboard is a response to significant interest from our stakeholders in accessing the index. It is a resource for policymakers, researchers, and the public to better assess AI preparedness and, importantly, to identify the actions and design the policies needed to help ensure that the rapid gains of AI can benefit all,” wrote Melina.

For a few days, AI chip juggernaut Nvidia sat on the throne as the world’s biggest company, but behind its staggering success are questions on whether new entrants can stake a claim to the artificial intelligence bonanza.

Nvidia, which makes the processors that are the only option to train generative AI’s large language models, is now Big Tech’s newest member and its stock market takeoff has lifted the whole sector.

Even tech’s second rung on Wall Street has ridden on Nvidia’s coattails with Oracle, Broadcom, HP and a spate of others seeing their stock valuations surge, despite sometimes shaky earnings.

Amid the champagne popping, startups seeking the attention of Silicon Valley venture capitalists are being asked to innovate — but without a clear indication of where the next chapter of AI will be written.

When it comes to generative AI, doubts persist on what exactly will be left for companies that are not existing model makers, a field dominated by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Google and Anthropic.

Most agree that competing with them head-on could be a fool’s errand.

“I don’t think that there’s a great opportunity to start a foundational AI company at this point in time,” said Mike Myer, founder and CEO of tech firm Quiq, at the Collision technology conference in Toronto.

Some have tried to build applications that use or mimic the powers of the existing big models, but this is being slapped down by Silicon Valley’s biggest players.

“What I find disturbing is that people are not differentiating between those applications which are roadkill for the models as they progress in their capabilities, and those that are really adding value and will be here 10 years from now,” said venture capital veteran Vinod Khosla.

– ‘Won’t keep up’ –

The tough-talking Khosla is one of OpenAI’s earliest investors.

“Grammarly won’t keep up,” Khosla predicted of the spelling and grammar checking app, and others similar to it.

He said these companies, which put only a “thin wrapper” around what the AI models can offer, are doomed.

One of the fields ripe for the taking is chip design, Khosla said, with AI demanding ever more specialized processors that provide highly specific powers.

“If you look across the chip history, we really have for the most part focused on more general chips,” Rebecca Parsons, CTO at tech consultancy Thoughtworks, told AFP.

Providing more specialized processing for the many demands of AI is an opportunity seized by Groq, a hot startup that has built chips for the deployment of AI as opposed to its training, or inference — the specialty of Nvidia’s world-dominating GPUs.

Groq CEO Jonathan Ross told AFP that Nvidia won’t be the best at everything, even if they are uncontested for generative AI training.

“Nvidia and (its CEO) Jensen Huang are like Michael Jordan… the greatest of all time in basketball. But inference is baseball, and we try and forget the time where Michael Jordan tried to play baseball and wasn’t very good at it,” he said.

Another opportunity will come from highly specialized AI that will provide expertise and know-how based on proprietary data which won’t be co-opted by voracious big tech.

“Open AI and Google aren’t going to build a structural engineer. They’re not going to build products like a primary care doctor or a mental health therapist,” said Khosla.

Profiting from highly specialized data is the basis of Cohere, another of Silicon Valley’s hottest startups that pitches specifically-made models to businesses that are skittish about AI veering out of their control.

“Enterprises are skeptical of technology, and they’re risk-averse, and so we need to win their trust and to prove to them that there’s a way to adopt this technology that’s reliable, trustworthy and secure,” Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez told AFP.

When he was just 20 and working at Google, Gomez co-authored the seminal paper “Attention Is All You Need,” which introduced Transformer, the architecture behind popular large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4.

The company has received funding from Nvidia and Salesforce Ventures and is valued in the billions of dollars.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, stated that artificial intelligence (AI) will eventually eliminate all jobs, but he believes this is not necessarily a bad development, reported CNN. Speaking at a startup and tech event in Paris on Thursday, Musk said, “Probably none of us will have a job,”.

Elon Musk was speaking remotely via webcam at the Viva Tech event where he predicted a future where jobs would be “optional.”

He said, “If you want to do a job that’s kinda like a hobby, you can do a job.” Musk added, “But otherwise, AI and the robots will provide any goods and services that you want.”

Musk highlighted that for this scenario to succeed, there would need to be a “universal high income,” which should not be confused with universal basic income, however, he did not elaborate much on this concept.

The Universal basic income (UBI) refers to the government providing a certain amount of money to everyone, regardless of their earnings.

“There would be no shortage of goods or services,” Musk stated. He highlighted that AI capabilities have advanced rapidly over the past few years, advancing so quickly that regulators, companies, and users are still figuring out how to utilize the technology responsibly.

In the past also Musk expressed his concerns about AI. During his keynote on Thursday, he described the technology as his “biggest fear”. He cited the “Culture Book Series” by Ian Banks, a utopian fictionalized depiction of a society run by advanced technology, as the most realistic and “the best envisioning of a future AI.”

Musk questioned whether people would feel emotionally fulfilled in a future without jobs.

“The question will really be one of meaning – if the computer and robots can do everything better than you, does your life have meaning?” Musk said.

He added, “I do think there’s perhaps still a role for humans in this – in that we may give AI meaning.”

He also advised parents to control and limit the amount of social media their children consume, saying that social media platforms “are being programmed by a dopamine-maximizing AI.”

Industry experts are continuously raising concerns over how various industries and jobs will be transformed as AI proliferates in the market.

CNN reports that in January, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab found that workplaces are adopting AI more slowly than some had expected and feared. The report also noted that many jobs previously identified as vulnerable to AI were not economically beneficial for employers to automate at that time.

Experts largely believe that many jobs requiring high emotional intelligence and human interaction, such as mental health professionals, creatives, and teachers, will not need replacing.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella unveiled a new category of PC on Monday that features generative artificial intelligence tools built directly into Windows, the company’s world leading operating system.

The tech giant estimates that more than 50 million “AI PCs” will be sold over the next 12 months, given the appetite for devices powered by ChatGPT-style technology.

“We are introducing an entirely new class of Windows PCs engineered to unleash the power of distributed AI,” Nadella said at a launch event in Redmond, Washington.

“We call this new category ‘Copilot Plus’… The result is the fastest, most AI-ready Windows PCs ever built,” he added.

Of all the tech giants, Microsoft has pushed the most aggressively to infuse the powers of generative AI into its products, often leaving rival Google to play catch-up.

ChatGPT-style AI, which is called Copilot at Microsoft, is available across the company’s products, including Teams, Outlook and its Windows operating system.

Microsoft even tried, so far unsuccessfully, to rejuvenate Bing, its online search engine, with generative AI powers.

The pivot to AI has been celebrated by Wall Street, with Microsoft now the world’s biggest company by market capitalization, taking the spot from Apple.

Nadella’s announcement on AI comes on the heels of those made by Google and ChatGPT-maker Open AI last week.

The companies showcased updates to their chatbots, featuring more human-like interactions and new abilities to understand their surroundings via video, though the innovations are not yet available to users.

Google also announced it was adding AI answers to its world leading search engine, despite fears it may eat into its advertising revenues.

Microsoft is OpenAI’s main investor and has injected some $13 billion in the form of cloud computing credits that fulfill the ChatGPT-makers huge needs for computing.

‘AI revolution’

Analysts believe that the hunger for AI products is helping buoy Microsoft and Google’s cloud computing businesses, with clients ready to pay a premium to adopt ChatGPT-like capabilities.

In a note to clients, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said that AI will add $25 billion-$30 billion to Microsoft’s sales by 2025.

“The spending on AI is unprecedented across the tech world and this is just the first phase of the AI Revolution playing out,” Ives said.

Microsoft’s injection of AI into PC’s and devices comes just ahead of an Apple event next month that is widely expected to see ChatGPT’s abilities feature in a new iPhone.

Media reports also signal that Apple could announce a partnership between Apple and OpenAI.

The tech giants are racing the products out the door despite worries that generative Ai poses a threat to society.

Authorities, including in the usually low-regulated US, are drawing up ways to more closely track the developments in AI, and potentially put limits on its deployment.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)