Techfastly May 2021 by Techfastly

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BITCOIN

- THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL CURRENCY?

Story of the Machine Series:

In conversation with

SIMARPREET SINGH & PRITIKA MEHTA Founder, SockSoho -One of The Most Loved Sock Brands

GALILEO TELESCOPE

SCRUM PROJECT ARE YOU JUST MANAGEMENT: AGILE” The“DOING Ideal Agile Practice OR “BEING AGILE” How does

THE FUTURE OF OpenAI’S ROBOT AND WORK

RITAM

Founder of India Film Project,

Talks about growing a community of 7.5 lac filmmakers, writers, storytellers, musicians, photographers, and creators.

GPT 3

WORK? MEET

CLUBHOUSE

Table of Contents 13 Scrum Project Management: The Ideal Agile Practice Scrum aims at helping the project team to work together, build team spirit, embrace agility, and deliver a quality product in less time. It also allows them to self-organize, collaborate, and assess their failures and successes.

32 How does OpenAI’s GPT 3 work? The GPT 3 can write texts, poems, translate paragraphs, chat, code, design, create answers, and much more. It’s like having a personal writing assistant!

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48 Story of the Machines Series: Unravelling the Mysteries of The Universe, With A Wooden Tube and A Polished Lens It was Galileo who, at the start of the 17th century, gave substance to Copernicus’s heliocentric (planets revolve around the Sun) theory. He helped humanity belie the abstract ideas of our self-centred existence, albeit not necessarily during his lifetime, and unleashed the rather hefty idea that we were not the centre of the universe.

Culture Shift – An indispensable shift to building an AI-Powered organization

SockSoho Interview

Everything You Need to Know About Deep Fake Technology

Artificial Intelligence’s Ethical Dilemma: A Positive Outlook

Artificial Intelligence: The Future is Now; How AI is All Around Us

IFP Interview

Education Technology Innovations and Their Role in the COVID World

Bitcoin - The Future of Global Currency?

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Editor

From the

Work-from-home is the new normal, and many organizations are embracing the remote work environment. Managing a team remotely could be challenging. The Scrum project framework allows the team members to self-organize, collaborate, and assess their failures and successes. As you would read further, you would learn about the benefits of the scrum framework, why to choose it, and how to manage scrum frameworks. Artificial Intelligence is all around us, and it seems impossible to imagine our daily chores without technology tools. There are always ethical concerns associated with machine’s capability to think or behave like humans. One of the articles focuses on the positive side of artificial intelligence’s ethical dilemma. As you would read along, you would learn in details about the products of AI like GPT-3, Deep Fake Technology, and innovations in educational sector. In our interview series, we had the tech-founders of a direct-to-consumer sock brand for men. Mr. Simarpreet Singh, a computer science engineer, and TEDx speaker, talks about how he and his partners have been leveraging technology to disrupt fashion. We also spoke with Ritam, founder of the India Film Project (IFP). He talks about his journey that started as a 50-hour filmmaking challenge with 600 participants in 2011 and became the world’s largest filmmaking challenge with 36,000 participants in 2019. We discussed with him the impact of emerging technologies in the filmmaking industry. We bring you the story of the Galileo Telescope, ‘Unravelling the Mysteries of The Universe, With A Wooden Tube and A Polished Lens’ in our ‘Story of Machine’ series. We would appreciate your feedback and are always open to suggestions. Here is your edition. Do read it, enjoy it, and nourish in the knowledge. Happy reading! Thank you Srikant Rawat COO, Techfastly

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BARKHA SHETH

CULTURE SHIFT – An indispensable shift to building an AI-Powered organisation

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An insight-driven organisation - It’s been ten years since this phrase found its way into active business vocabulary, and yet most companies have fallen short of truly being one. Why? ‘Cultural barrier’ might be to blame.

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elping leaders make more informed, effective and intelligent business decisions is the core idea behind analytics. Yet, entrenching data, evaluation, and evidence-based reasoning into the organisation’s decision-making processes has fallen short of mainstream application in a wide variety of cases. In a report published by Deloitte on Becoming a Data-Driven Organisation, surveyors found that “fewer than four in 10 (37 per cent) place their companies in the top two categories of the IDO (Insight Driven Organisation) Maturity Scale, and of those, only 10 per cent fall into the highest category. The remaining 63 per cent were aware of analytics but lacked infrastructure, found themselves still working in silos, or were expanding ad hoc analytics capabilities beyond silos”. Reasons for this vast discrepancy ranged from lack of leadership direction to even a lack of trust in a machine’s interpretation of happenings. This would result in falling back onto traditional working mechanics and failure to expand on AI’s value proposition. In each of these cases, the organisation’s culture has played a significant role in the acceptance and successful implementation of deep data analytics. As most executives eventually realise, embedding AI-based decision making into an organisation involves re-wiring the business at a fundamental level. While the initial work might seem substantial, the rewards are to be leveraged well into the future. Here are some relatively simple ways to help employees become active participants in charting a path towards truly being an Insight Driven Organisation (IDO).

Taking the Leap of Faith and Setting the Tone Analytics is already mainstream. However, most businesses still rely on structured data that fits into rows and columns, missing out on critical insights that are to be gained from product images, customer interaction recordings and social media messaging. Herein lies the argument for adopting technologically advanced AI-driven software that can sift, consolidate and show appropriate recommendation from troves of data. To make the shift, it’s essential organisations give due consideration to these four avenues-

a. b. c.

Data Science is a Team Effort – Traditional working mindsets are often the most significant resistance to the adoption of AI, making it imperative that welcoming datadriven decision-making starts right from the top. Cultivate the Talent- It’s essential to nurture a diverse team that is curious, numerally proficient, and capable of walking the median line between analytics and business requirements. This progressively creates a shift in the right direction.

Go experiential to Data-Driven– Augmenting human decision making with data-driven insights means trusting the algorithm’s suggestions. It also entails building the autonomy to act on those insights without higher-level authority. If every proposal generated by the systems has to be approved, then the purpose gets defeated. 7

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Start with a Minimum Viable Product– While a business system with all bells and whistles may seem ideal, striving for one from the get-go is a fundamental mistake. Instead, look towards speeding up development and achieving gains within weeks with minimum viable products that can iteratively be scaled up.

Demystify Artificial Intelligence As the first line of defences towards building a data-powered organisation is taken down, the attention now needs to swing towards setting up the required mindsets for success.

Explain the why’s - People often have qualms about adopting newer technology in the workplace, mainly because the need is never understood. Why break something that is working? But by demystifying data analytics and explaining the competitive edge the company is seeking to gain, executives can rapidly help in creating a unanimous acceptance of AI-driven insights

Bolster morale and highlight common ground – From the fear of obsolescence to strict reliance on the human rationale to build customer-driven relationships, an organisation usually has a lot to contend with when taking basic calls suggested by algorithms. In such cases, making a good story, investing in building the correct information around new systems, and even encouraging adoption through scorecards and perks, can significantly help break down mental barriers.

c. d.

Bridging the gap between technical and business – Much like translating software for languages, a new class of experts are now coming to the fore. Known as ‘Analytics Translators’, they play a crucial role in identifying roadblocks and streamlining business requirements while ensuring adoption goes smoothly. Equal Budgeting for integration and adoption – It’s easy to sidestep this critical element. Companies are often found to allocate most of the budget towards developing the systems, forgetting that workflow redesign, communications, and training are equally vital. Successful implementors of AI spend almost half of the analytics budget on activities that drove adoption.

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Herein lies the argument for adopting technologically advanced AI-driven software that can sift, consolidate and show appropriate recommendation from troves of data

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Expanding Acceptance with Organisation Learning (OL) Once the basic machinations are in place, it’s time to develop acceptance. Facilitating AI implementation with Organisation Learning has shown to increase adoption exponentially. A topdown approach to educate teams works best and helps align priorities across the board. Aim to target leadership with broader, higher-level educative content. OL should make executives understand the impact on workers’ roles, barriers to adoption, and talent development. Furthermore, offering guidance on instilling the underlying cultural changes required goes a long way towards a smooth implementation. For those at the core of the business, the ‘Insight-Driven Decision-Makers’, OL should help bring them up to speed with sessions that incorporate real business scenarios. This focus enables staff to derive maximum advantage from AI’s insight capabilities and take effective business calls on, say, product features and launches. Once a model is securely up and running, an oft-forgotten faction is the analytics and translators (those who act as the intermediaries between IT and Business). Here, the organisation needs to up their game by continually focusing on sharpening the hard and soft skills of those directly involved in creating reports and summaries. This will ensure that algorithms being used are established on the most cutting-edge innovations in data science and that analytical reasoning is aptly applied to solve business problems.

Culture as a Catalyst Most AI transformations take up to 18-36 months to complete, with larger projects taking a few years. Herein lies the biggest challenges for most organisations – loss of momentum in the light of growing cost and negligible results. Address these challenges by targeting smaller gains in development and enforce adoption by

Incorporating learnings and pushing aside misgivings – A key focus area for

leadership, who need to walk the talk, steadfast commitment to AI needs to get highlighted even considering failed experiments. By highlighting what was learned in the pilots and reiterating the need for more significant data, organisations can rapidly scale up implementation and adoption efforts

b. c.

Making business accountable and not the analytics team – Analytic teams

are simply owners of AI products. It is the business factions that need to own products and see them to successful completion. A scorecard that effectively captures performance metrics is usually an excellent way to align analytics and business goals.

Retaining an eye on With vs Without - Comparing the results of decisions made

with and without AI can encourage employees to embrace the generated reports. For instance, if on further investigation, executives learn that non-AI-supported forecasts are typically accurate, say about 50% of the times, that immediately bolsters the case for relying on something far more tangible than just intuition. 11

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Creating a Virtuous Circle As is evident, successfully establishing a data-driven culture is the key driver that helps companies scale from carrying out analytics projects in silos to a fully insight-driven organisation. Given the research, the willingness to act on analytically derived insights, to make decisions, change processes, and adapt behaviours is best achieved when the organisation in its entirety decides to take the leap of faith and encourage a unanimous move to the future of data-driven business. Such actions create a favourable cycle of events. Interdisciplinary teams bring together the diverse skills and perspectives needed to build new and practical tools. With time, this leads to workers absorbing more collaborative and synergistic practices. As they work more closely with colleagues in other functions and geographies, their vision expands. Workforces move from trying to solve discrete problems in their departments to completely reimagining business and operating models. This culture shift enables the speed of innovation as the rest of the organisation adopts the test-and-learn approach that successfully drove the pilot AI initiatives.

Virtu

o us Circle 12

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RAMANI RANJAN

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Introduction to Scrum Framework

this technological

Agile is an innovative project management

era, organizations

method characterized by dividing the entire

use state-of-the-

project into short phases and adapting to

art frameworks

frequent changes. This framework encourages

to build products

the project team to use flexible and transparent

and services. Your process plans with frequent assessments and

organization is no exception to this. Whether

reviews. Amongst other contemporary Agile

you use traditional or cutting-edge product

frameworks, Scrum methodology is being widely

development methods, your products

used in organizations worldwide. Scrum aims

must be efficient, reliable, and user-friendly.

at helping the project team to work together,

Nevertheless, it would be best to implement

build team spirit, embrace agility, and deliver

the art & science of effective project

a quality product in less time. It also allows

management methods to build robust and

them to self-organize, collaborate, and assess

radical products. These project management their failures and successes. Though primarily insights and expertise are used in the Agile

designed for software project management, this

methodology.

revolutionary framework is tailored to implement in construction, engineering, aerospace, pharmaceutical, sales & marketing, and numerous other domains.

Scrum aims at helping the project team to work together, build team spirit, embrace agility, and deliver a quality product in less time. 15

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Why Is Scrum The Ultimate Project Management Framework? Organizations do feasibility analysis whether to implement the Waterfall or Agile (Scrum) methodology to manage their projects. If they opt for Agile methodology, their project teams must understand the reliability and effectiveness of the Scrum framework. Scrum divides the product development process into a series of phases known as sprints. In a sprint, the team develops certain features and functions of the product discussed in the sprint backlog. A sprint backlog contains a prioritized list of deliverables that the team agreed upon to work and deliver in a sprint. The Scrum team develops the features, does quality analysis, reviews the feedback, and delivers a working product in that sprint which lasts for two to three weeks. An ideal scrum team includes developers, scrum master, product owner, quality analysts, and other stakeholders. The following reasons explain why you must choose the scrum framework for managing your product development processes:

Communication and Collaboration Scrum encourages the project team for clear communication, cooperation, and collaboration for each sprint with the scrum master, product owner, and other stakeholders. As a scrum team member, you attend frequent team meetings, participate in discussions, and analyze feedback. This helps you incrementally build the product until the required features are incorporated, and quality standards are met. It aims at cultivating collaborative and cooperative work culture for managing projects.

Commitment and Obligation For better customer satisfaction, your organization advises the team to focus on the quality, speed, and cost of the products. The scrum process helps the team stay committed to give their best and help create quality products. The scrum process inspires dedication and sincerity within team members while working on each sprint. The team must develop the features they agreed

upon and oblige to the product’s quality, cost, and schedule.

Adaptability and Flexibility It would be best if the team members are open to incorporate frequent changes while the development progresses. Based on your team’s requirement, the project scope may alter from time to time. While the product development time and cost are constant, features and functions may vary frequently; the project team must accommodate the requested changes.

Awareness and Focus As a scrum team member, the more you are aware of the requirements, the more you become result-oriented. To ensure project delivery on time, your team and other stakeholders frequently meet to discuss requirements and review product features. You can achieve greater success and fulfill the team’s goal by conducting proper research, brainstorming ideas, and analyzing various functions.

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Prioritization Sorting and prioritizing tasks yield better results. You can prioritize the scrum tasks based on the order of importance or urgency, values. Prioritizing tasks helps you deliver a crucial part of the product that benefits the customer with greater business values in less time. This helps you speed up the product development process in a sprint and reach the market faster by fulfilling the customers’ requirements.

Openness and Righteousness Sincerity, honesty, and loyalty towards work are expected from all workforces across domains. All team members and stakeholders are open to and aware of the requirements, solution paths, impeding challenges, and risks associated with the process. All stakeholders get equal chances to contribute to changes, feedbacks, reviews, and other challenges.

Customer- and User-centric Until your customer is happy with the final product, your job is half done. Customer and user satisfaction are essential in scrum product development processes. That’s the reason why customers take part in the review process and analyze various features of the product. More so, sprint reviews help demonstrate product features to customers that they can analyze before providing feedback.

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Benefits of Adopting Scrum Framework The scrum method implements transparent, collaborative, and cost-effective approaches. It creates a win-win situation and benefits the customers as well as the organization.

Transparency

Value Addition

You must engage all stakeholders such as your team, scrum master, and product owner for each sprint. By actively participating in various sprint activities, your team creates a transparent work ethic through open discussions and equal work assignments. Hence, people involved in the project are always aware of the project status. This helps your team to identify issues from various perspectives and provide appropriate solutions. All stakeholders are invited and qualified to contribute to various stages of product development.

The scrum process adds value to the product development framework by implementing an iterative and incremental project management process. This helps assess the quality of the product by scrutinizing errors, implementing frequent changes, and responding to customer feedback that helps build the right product.

Cost-Effectiveness The project scopes and features may vary, but product cost and delivery time would be constant if you adopt scrum methodology. As features are developed in scalable chunks, your team must do a proper cost analysis and release planning. This gives you an appropriate view of the future cost estimation.

Increased Collaboration and Ownership Collaboration and ownership are key factors in developing quality products. Your scrum team and other stakeholders work closely to create a quality product. Various meetings enable them to collaborate for the expected results. As a scrum team member, you take ownership of your tasks and put dedicated efforts to complete them.

Managing Scrum Frameworks As discussed before, scrum project management focuses on communication and collaboration among your team members, customers, and businesses. You can ensure desired quality if you follow popular scrum practices such as on-time delivery, feedback analysis, and others. Each delivery is loaded with feedbacks that help drive innovation, research, and brainstorming to get better results.

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Scrum Artifacts Your scrum team and stakeholders need certain crucial metadata points that help plan, execute, and deliver the products. These are called scrum artifacts, and these artifacts help action plans before and during the project execution. Below we have discussed some of these artifacts:

Product Backlog: The Product

backlog is a structured list of features, functions, and deliverables that are part of the project scope or the entire product. Based on the requirements, the product owner guides your team to prioritize some of the items and work on the most crucial features. The backlog may change based on the market condition, business requirements, and available technologies.

Sprint Backlog: Sprint backlog is

a list of prioritized task items scheduled for a sprint. The scrum team extracts the list from the product backlog and creates user stories by providing a short description of each task item. This helps them identify the requirements and develop a planned portion of the product. The team can add or remove some of the backlog items for prioritization in a sprint.

Product Increment: Product

increment is a potentially shippable product incorporated with all features and functions planned for a Sprint and the result of values added in previous Sprints. As a deliverable product integrated with sprint backlog items, it ensures creating a ‘Definition of Done’ document with all acceptance criteria. However, from an agile project management perspective, the Burndown chart reveals the status of the sprint and displays the number of outstanding items. This helps to measure the effort and know the product development schedule.

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The scrum method implements transparent, collaborative,and cost-effective approaches. It creates a win-win situation and benefits the customers as well as the organization.

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Common Scrum Practices In the scrum process, a self-organized and committed team is inevitable to deliver a great quality product. Nevertheless, scrum teams, along with all stakeholders, need to follow some systematic ad result-oriented practices. The product owner needs to focus on some of the followings factors and other practices:

Project Planning:

A stepping stone to the product development process, project planning focuses on assessing product vision, product roadmap, feasibility, and other associated details. Ideally, the duration of the meeting is as short as one day.

assess the efforts to create backlogs, identify resources, and complete tasks in the sprint. An ideal sprint duration may vary from two to three weeks, depending on the criticality of the requirements, available solutions, and review processes.

Release Planning:

Daily Scrum Meeting: A time-

Release planning emphasizes planning the next set of functionalities of the product to be delivered to the customer. This helps to identify forthcoming product go-live dates so that development can be mobilized. This allows the team to have a release overview and create various schedules for the sprint.

Backlog Grooming:

Backlog grooming or refinement is the process of reviewing and prioritizing backlog items and ensuring the next set up of user stories is upto-date. This is a recurring process that aims to maintain, reordering, and adapt changes in the list of features discussed in the backlog. During this process, the team adds new and removes obsolete user stories and defines tasks clearly to remove ambiguity. This also helps assign or reassign story points, estimate efforts, identify challenges and reduce roadblocks.

Sprint Planning: Sprint planning

helps the team review backlog, discuss the critical functions, and prioritize action items. The scrum team takes two to four hours to

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boxed daily stand-up meeting that continues for 15 minutes or less, a daily scrum meeting encourages regular status updates and related activities. In the daily sessions, team members would discuss the next activities, roadblocks and provide suggestions.

Sprint Review: To demonstrate

product functions to all stakeholders post completion of the sprint, it helps assess and evaluate the product. This allows the scrum team to rethink their accomplishments, focus on improvement areas, and implement practices in the next sprint.

Sprint Retrospective: Every

project team is prone to omission and commission while working on a project. However, the agility to adapt to changes fosters an attitude for improvement and betterment. Sprint retrospective provides your team with an opportunity to reflect on errors, risks, challenges, and limitations they come across during sprint activity. It enables them to refrain from repeating similar errors and paves ways to improve product quality.

Scrum Planning Practices Scrum planning practices help to provide a better solution to the product development process. You must follow the following practice of scrum planning must be followed in agile product development.

● Checking project roadmaps before scrum meetings helps define the objectives and requirements effectively. ● Conducting backlog grooming before the sprint meeting ensures clarity about the functions discussed in the product backlog. This enables the team to revisit the requirements to remove ambiguity. ● Defining backlogs and sprint goals at sprint meetings help in deciding backlogs and actionable items to be covered in a sprint. Backlog grooming or refinement must be completed beforehand. ● Seeking dedication from the teams helps to ensure commitments to work on the plan without compromising the quality. ● Reviewing and discussing relevant action items in the backlog helps add value and transparency to sprint activities.

Conclusion: The success of a project depends on how effectively you plan and what strategies you implement, irrespective of resources, infrastructures, and costs. Organizations that need quality, cost-effectiveness, and customer satisfaction are implementing revolutionary and innovative product development methodologies. Many organizations implement the Agile method which is cutting-edge technology, and adapting its scrum framework to encourage innovative product management processes. Scrum enables teams to plan, develop, test, and deliver products incrementally and interactively. This also empowers teams to assess the effectiveness and quality of the product through frequent changes and feedback incorporation.

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COMPANY BLURB: SockSoho is a direct-to-consumer socks brand for men. Within a year of launch, it has become India’s most loved sock brand. In fact, some of the biggest Bollywood and Hollywood celebrities, top Indian CEOs, and even Sheikhs from Dubai are spotted wearing SockSoho socks. Just like Amazon started with books, SockSoho has started with socks. Using socks as their winning product, the tech founders of SockSoho are on a mission to disrupt the $40 Bn men fashion industry in India. 25

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Pritika Mehta Pritika is a Data Scientist turned Entrepreneur. She started coding when she was 14. She graduated with an MS in Artificial Intelligence from the State University of New York. She was also chosen as the Ambassador for TEDx talks and a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum. Pritika had worked with Bank of America and TripAdvisor in the US before she quit her job to launch SockSoho.

Simarpreet Singh Simar is a computer science engineer who found his passion in growth marketing. He has helped multiple startups grow to $10M+ in sales single-handedly. He is also a TEDx speaker and World Economic Forum Global Shaper.

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We spoke with the founders of SockSoho and discussed how they are using technology to revolutionize the fashion industry.

Could you talk about how you got the idea to start SockSoho, a directto-consumer fashion brand?

India is one of the largest e-commerce markets in the world, and fashion is the fastest-growing segment. However, most fashion brands in India focus on women, while the men’s fashion market is entirely undeserved. So, we decided to build a brand for these 200 million urban Indian men. While doing consumer research, we wrote down a list of 80+ items we could launch with. Surprisingly, socks came on top as it is one category that has seen no innovation in decades. Just like Amazon started with books, we have started with socks. We are on a mission to build the biggest direct-to-consumer fashion brand for India’s 200M urban men and disrupt the trilliondollar fashion industry.

Your co-founder quit her job in the US to build this. Why did you not start SockSoho in the US?

If you met me in 2010, I’d have been building SockSoho in the US, but the same is not true in 2021. The direct-to-consumer revolution that started in the US 10 years back has just begun in India. We are the right people, at the right place at the right time. With a 1200% increase in first-time online shoppers due to Covid, it’s perfect for building a D2C monopoly in India.

Do you plan on extending the verticals for your collection?

We are eyeing many verticals as fashion hasn’t seen much innovation in India. As we speak, testing is going on in 4 different verticals in India as well as North American markets. You’ll soon see us launching new products.

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How has data helped you with customer acquisition and marketing strategies?

A retail giant didn’t start Amazon; techies started it. The same goes for Netflix; the founders understood technology deeply and disrupted the industry. We’re bringing a similar kind of revolution in the fashion industry. Pritika and I don’t come from the fashion industry; we are computer scientists by background. We are using tech to disrupt the fashion industry. We are gathering user data to understand customer behavior and spending patterns. That’s why we are growing so fast - data-driven decisions help us serve customers better than the other fashion companies that play on gut-feeling. We are using socks as a niche fashion category to build AI recommendation technology around e-commerce. We are using this technology already, and our repeat purchase rate is four times the industry standard. As we scale, we will be expanding into various verticals of e-commerce and disrupt the trillion-dollar e-commerce market.

We noticed that you perform A/B testing before launching new socks patterns. How has it helped you?

We are lucky that we are sitting on a data goldmine at the right time, disrupting a segment that is ripe for disruption. If you’re on that kind of rocket ship, data becomes your compass. We operate on three core principles - we keep A/B testing, we do fast iterations, and we keep talking to customers. That reflects in everything we do - from our designs to our marketing communications. Before any design is launched, we create multiple iterations and test it with our existing customers. This gives us an early insight into what will work. Unlike the traditional fashion brands, which launch first and then waste months on figuring out what works and what doesn’t, our instant testing and feedback loop gives us a clear insight into what customers want.

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We are lucky that we are sitting on a data goldmine at the right time, disrupting a segment that is ripe for disruption. If you’re on that kind of rocket ship, data becomes your compass.

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SockSoho is one of the world’s first startups to automate the entire experience of online shopping on WhatsApp. Tell us more about your unique chatbot that every investor is talking about

One of our secret sauces is using WhatsApp to make sales. We are building AI-based chatbots that can simulate a human talking over messages. We are using the data and insights from all the interactions to understand the patterns that exist while humans shop online. With our in-house technology, we are refining these chatbots to mimic human behavior and give brick-and-mortar shopping experience to customers. This leads to lower customer service costs, high customer satisfaction, and conversion rates upwards of 40%. WhatsApp brings in a level of personalization that no website can offer. With more data and users coming on to our platform, our AI-based chatbots learn from interactions and get stronger. Once these chatbots are mature, they have the potential to revolutionize the shopping experience for customers in various verticals.

SockSoho launched as an e-commerce business, but we’ve started seeing your products in retail stores too. Do you plan on becoming a retail brand?

We want to be wherever our customers are present. E-commerce gives us massive reach and deep insights into customer behavior. As we were scaling, we got massive interest from retailers from across India. We piloted with a few stores, used online insights to generate offline sales, and we’re now present in 22 cities. In the following year, you will see us present everywhere.

What’s your long-term vision with SockSoho, and how big a role would technology play in fulfilling that vision?

Our long-term vision is to build the Uniqlo of India. Socks are just the beginning. What took other brands decades to achieve will take us a few years because we are leveraging technology to disrupt fashion. The taxi industry was the same for decades before Uber came into the picture. We are doing the same kind of innovation in the fashion industry.

Thank you for taking time to do this interview. We are excited to see the next products.

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How does AMBIKA BHANDARI

OpenAI’s GPT 3 work?

GPT

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What

if you had a technology that could write the best write-ups? Seems something from Science Fiction, right? But guess what, OpenAI’s GPT-3 can do that.

The GPT 3 can write texts, poems, translate paragraphs, chat, code, design, create answers, and much more. It’s like having a personal writing assistant! Currently, it is one of the largest language models in the world. OpenAI released GPT 3 in June 2020. Since then, it is the talk of the Machine Learning community. Developers around the world developed startups based on GPT-3. Copy.AI is one such GPT-3 powered AI which can generate copies for social media posts, ads, and more. You need to select the copy type and describe your product. And within a few seconds, it will generate results.

OpenAI released GPT 3 in June 2020. Since then, it is the talk of the Machine Learning 34

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But what exactly is GPT-3? According to Greg Raiz, the CEO of Raizlabs, “GPT-3 is the largest leap in artificial intelligence we’ve seen in a long time and the implications of these advances will be felt for a really long time”. OpenAI’s GPT-3 is the successor to GPT-2. OpenAI is an AI research center that works on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which may help humanity. It has been developing AI technologies over the years. The GPT-3 is from the GPT series of API. The early Generative Prein its research how Artificial on unlabeled available AI on labeled data.

mentions of Training (GPT) are papers. It discusses Intelligence can work data. Most of the technologies work

However, in the researchers billion parameter predict future data. If you use assess the words teach the AI. The start predicting on the unlabeled to repeat the generate the

GPT 3 paper, the say that the 175 language model can texts on unlabeled GPT 3, you can and use them to AI system will then future words based data. You have procedure until you desired output.

So, this makes writing! It can with a few

it suitable for any generate any copy instructions.

According to Greg Raiz’s article, “The original GPT only worked on 7000 books data. However, the GPT-3 worked on 410 billion data by crawling the world wide web. Not only that, but it also uses data from books, Wikipedia, and a lot more. So, it is over 45 Terrabytes of texts!” For now, the GPT-3 is in an experimental stage. Selected developers are getting early access to it. Sahar Mor is one such developer who got early access. He said, “The main difference I see with GPT 3 is that, unlike other AI applications that are narrow, its performance is general and humanlike.” He used it to develop Airpaper that generates structured data from any document, PDF, or image!

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How does GPT-3 function?

he GPT-3 generates texts using a neural network system. It is considered the most accurate compared to its predecessors in the GPT series. As it uses 175 billion parameters, it is capable of learning on its own. It means GPT-3 can do any work without training! It is highly efficient due to its incontext evaluation. Once the user feeds the information, the AI analyses the texts. Then it provides the most probable statistical data using a calculation. For this, it uses the massive data that exists on the internet. It doesn’t understand the meaning of the words it produces, but it generates the correct sentence. With a bit of language adjustment, GPT-3 can even write stories, blogs, essays, jokes, and more. Interestingly, the output data is similar to the human writing style.

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Here are some of the examples!

The developer demonstrates how he used GPT 3 based technology to describe the react app he wants. The AI generations the function (code) to build the app (To-do).

https://twitter.com/sharifshameem/status/1284421499915403264

Here, GPT -3 is developing paragraphs based on the initial hints.

https://twitter.com/zebulgar/status/1283927560435326976 38

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The user instructs the GPT 3 to tweak the writing style of a sentence, and it does its magic!

https://twitter.com/quasimondo/status/1284372088460115968 Many people shared their experiences with this with this Artificial Intelligence on Twitter. If you type GPT-3 on the Twitter search bar, you will find many examples of how it works. Do you know it can also write a song with just the title and artist’s name? Not only that, but it can work as an ideas generator for businesses. Recently Designer Jordan Signer used this technology to build a plugin and named it “Designer”. This plugin produces app designs from descriptions.

https://twitter.com/jsngr/status/1284511080715362304 39

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What are the limitations of GPT-3? Although GPT-3 looks promising and is one of the greatest revolutions in the AI world, it has its shortcomings. Even Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, has pointed out its limitation. Here are some of its shortcomings.

Still in its Beta version The GPT-3 is still in its experimental version. It has a lot of potentials which we have already seen. But the hype around it is shadowing the problems that come with this model.

Doesn’t understand the meaning of the output This model uses statistics to dish out the most probable sentence or code. However, it doesn’t understand what it is presenting. Therefore, it lacks semantic understanding. GPT 3’s data is what it crawled on the internet, so it generates sexists, racists, and biased output!

Not anywhere close to AGI Many developers have praised the model as the start of AGI, but it is not so. It generates humanlike sentences because of its massive datasets. Structurally it is similar to its predecessor, GPT-2. The only difference is the resource it used for training. As it doesn’t have semantic understanding, proper reasoning skills, and lacks generalization, so it doesn’t have ‘human like’ writing skills. It can generate faulty output with biases. So, it’s far from something AI enthusiasts will consider in AGI.

Future of GPT-3 Till the time GPT-3 is in its experimental phase, it is difficult to say much about its future. However, as you can understand from the hype around it, it has a lot of potentials. The fact that many startups are using it to develop AI apps is evident of its future. But the fear is its human-like functioning! The output data is close to what human writes, so, this creates the chances of misuse. The cyber-world is already dealing with fake news, false information, and Deepfakes. With technology like GPT-3 in the scene, it can cause more problems! Therefore, there needs to be a regulation. OpenAI has already said about the dangerous impact of GPT-3, if not regulated. For now, only after proper inspection, the developers are getting access to this technology. OpenAI is strict with this model’s use. So, we can’t say much about this model’s future. However, it has opened many doors to an AGI world and got the ML community dreaming!

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Everything You Need to Know About

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APURVA MINCHEKAR

Technology

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Do you see “old pictures of babies” singing random songs and the audience going gaga over it surfacing all over Instagram reels? Or Do you see some legend or country freedom fighter coming alive in the picture -blinking its eyes or smiling back at you? Or Influencers bringing their grands’ picture to life and taking the reaction of their parents? Well, this clearly reflects how advanced and robust technology has grown over time. All this kind of facial manipulation is possible because of Deep Fake Technology, and here is what you need to know about it.

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What is Deep Fake Technology?

Google defines Deep Fake Technology as a synthetic media in which an existing image or a video is replaced with someone else’s likeness. Even though the definition seems very simple, the technology is much more complex. A deep fake technology can easily manipulate the facial muscles of a person using artificial intelligence. It can replace faces, synthesize faces and synthesize speech. For someone using this technology for entertainment can be fun, while others can land into serious problems if used for unlawful purposes. In 2017, Deep Fake Technology was first introduced in public. “Deep Fake,” a username on Reddit used to manipulate people’s facial expressions for pornographic purposes, and hence the technology was named after the name of the user. This technology has impacted many profiles, from celebrities to politicians. Some of the deep fake technology incidents surfacing all over social media includes Public Service Announcement by Former President Obama, Nancy Pelosi slowed down, deep fake roundtable- a funny compilation of Hollywood stars such as Tom Cruise and others, Trump joining the Breaking Bad and the list of examples is endless.

How Does a Deep Fake Technology Work?

Deep fake images are usually created by manipulating facial expressions or facial swapping using AI. These images are created by training the AI with hundreds of images, training it to identify the facial expressions, and reconstructing the patterns. The AI is trained to analyze an image from different angles to successfully transpose the image on each other making it look real. Mostly, selfies are used to create deep fake technology because your face and features can be easily traced. Another way to create deep technology is the use of GAN or Generative Adversarial Network. GAN consists of two algorithm bodies to act against each other. The first algorithm, known as Generator is trained to recognize the voice and convert it into images, which is then added to the original image. These manipulated pictures are then fed to a second algorithm Discriminator. At this stage, the image is just the face of the personality. Discriminator repeats the original images endless times that helps in improving Generator and Discriminator by giving feedback on performance. After enough cycles and feedback, the generator will start generating realistic faces of the personality giving the final result of the fake image and video.

Why is Deep Fake Technology Dangerous?

It is reported that more than 180 million photos are uploaded every day on social media. This technology has acted as a weapon in defaming celebrities’ profiles. With the help of advanced AI, the pictures of celebrities can be easily transposed onto nude and pornographic pictures. Considering that the technology can also create deep fake videos, the existing videos of political leaders can also manipulate the announcement, adding defamation to the political personality, making agenda chaos in public. Not only the celebrities, but it can also affect the common people’s life. It is reported that many women become victims to their predators by threatening them to leak fake intimate videos online or send them to their families. The technology seems fun on social media like Instagram but can cause equal or more damage to an individual’s life. 44

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Deep fake images are usually created by manipulating facial expressions or facial swapping using AI.

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How to Spot Deep Fake Images? Spotting a deep fake video or images can be difficult, but adding little effort to your actions can help you not fall into such traps. Here are two ways to spot them:

Poor Quality- The deep fake videos or images are generally of poor quality. Certain features might not be exactly like authentic muscle expressions, such as inconsistency in eyes blinking, patchy skin tone, and more. One of the significant indications is blinking because AI is not trained or aware of blinking movements.

Fine Details- Fine details are many times overlooked by the creator. However, paying focused attention to details like hair, jewellery, teeth can help you spot the difference between a real and a fake image.

How to Spot Deep Fake Videos? Deep Fake Videos are difficult to identify because of the use of AI. If you notice a difference between the person and the background, the video is likely to be manipulated. In such scenarios, the face of the person is more focused and the background doesn’t seem in sync or blurred or different, it is an indication that the video you are watching is fake.

How to Avoid Being Victim to Deep Fake Technology Traps? Many researchers and scientists have suggested that Artificial Intelligence can play a major role in detecting such images and videos. Tech firms such as Microsoft and Intel have introduced deep fake detection tools. However, building such technologies is time consuming; until then, one of the best ways to avoid such traps is to limit the upload of your pictures or videos especially close ups where your features can be easily traced.

Bottom Line Deep Fake Technology can be very amusing until it is used for entertainment purposes, but one must always verify the images before forwarding them to anyone. One of the ways that the future looks forward is the creation of advanced cameras that can convert the images and video into digital signatures that cannot be copied or tampered with by the hacker. With advancing technology and professionals getting skilled at creating deep fake, it can be very difficult to spot the real or the fake images.

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BARKHA SHETH

UNRAVELLING THE MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE, with a wooden tube and a polished lens

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What do these things have in common – a star-speckled sky, a spyglass and an avant-garde thought process? One man! A multi-faceted inventor, astronomer and physicist whose precocious epiphanies fostered the beginnings of modern astronomy

The stars, the omnipresent bystanders, have always had an alluring mystery around them. Perhaps it’s their expansive nature where they feel so close and yet so far. We know so much about them and yet so little. Some of our best theories of human existence have found substance in their study. Still, thus far, we struggle to comprehend their cosmic proportions. But mankind is undoubtedly stubborn if nothing else. Every mystery must be resolved, no matter how insurmountable the challenges. Imaginably that’s why science is always on a quest to find answers.

Pushing the boundaries of our understanding is what we humans do best. We are constantly striving to alter the unknown into the known through the power of scientific inquiry. History has been a steady witness to this notion. It’s filled with tales of revolutionary thinkers and innovative minds, seeking answers and questioning the very essence of commonplace understanding. This story is of one such person. Galileo Galilei, who, against all odds, defied what for many of his times was sound logic and set into motion something even more significant than he could envision – the birth of science as we know it. 50

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Galileo and the Telescope

you were to ever find yourself strolling through the Mueseo Galileo in the city of Florence, Italy, you would likely chance upon a rather ordinary object. At least, that’s what it looks like at first glance. Do give it a second peek, as this relic is one of the most important artefacts in the history of science - Galileo’s telescope.

It was Galileo who, at the start of the 17th century, gave substance to Copernicus’s heliocentric (planets revolve around the Sun) theory. He helped humanity belie the abstract ideas of our selfcentred existence, albeit not necessarily during his lifetime, and unleashed the rather hefty idea that we were not the centre of the universe.

It was this object that set into motion the debunking of a 2000-year-old theory. It bolstered and fueled the perceptions of the so-called heretic astronomers. Plus, in the last 400 years, it has triggered a collective response in the field of cosmology to find answers to one of the most complex questions that science has faced – “how did we come to exist?”. Most of the knowledge gleaned of our ever-expanding cosmos is easily contributed to this ubiquitous item and also to Galileo, who, with his single discovery and steadfastness, unleashed the new perception of our comic existence.

With that being said, it’s not the discovery of the solar system that is crucial in this story. Instead, it’s the discovery of the ‘telescope’ - a powerful example of the vital role that advent in technology has played in empowering scientific curiosity. The breakthrough of technological applications in science has continued to inform our systems of thought for centuries. Both science and technology represent a

larger category of activities that are distinct and yet highly interdependent. While technology has provided a fertile source for novel scientific questions, science has provided new knowledge that serves as a direct catalyst for new high-tech possibilities. And this give-and-take has been the case for thousands of years of our existence. Engineers like Galileo used innovation as the steppingstone to finally lend scientific credence to a field that had been the purview of philosophers like Aristotle, Plato and Ptolemy. From the latter, all three were great mathematicians, astronomers and scientists, but lacked the technological advances that could rightly inform their thoughts on our cosmos.

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The

Historical Acceptance of The Geo-Centric Model But in the early 16th century, Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish mathematician, suggested the now accepted heliocentric theory that it was the Earth that revolved around the Sun, much like other celestial bodies. His ideas were considered radical by many of his times. Copernicus himself feared retribution, so he waited until he was almost at his deathbed before publishing his astronomical treatise commonly called the Commentariolus, or “Little Commentary,” which laid the basis for his suncentred system. He correctly hypothesised the order of the known planets, including Earth, from the Sun and estimated their orbital periods relatively accurately in the treatise.

Up until the 17th century, astronomy was firmly in the grips of 2000-year-old philosophies laid out by Aristotle and Ptolemy. Both believed that all celestial bodies were perfect spheres and shared a common centre – The Earth. This was understandable considering that when people looked up at the skies, it seemed evident that the Sun, the Moon and the stars rotated around the Earth once a day. Their theory of a stationary Earth was so widely accepted that it formed part of religious scriptures for civilisations to come.

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But his ideologies were primarily considered heresy, and that led many to study his philosophies in secret. Those who did believe in its substance started calling themselves ‘Copernicans’. Here is one thing that we need to remember. All of these theories and assumptions were made based on what the naked eye could see. Yet, when proof from advents in technology came knocking at the door, the acceptance was rudimentary at best.

But One Starry Evening…

1609, Galileo, a Copernican himself, became the first to turn an invention he perfected to the star-speckled sky. Possibly the earliest of the many acts of dissent, Galileo knew that there was more to the cosmos than the neatly laid out models that had become part of everyday life. So exasperated was he with the complacency of the stargazers of his time that he wrote in frustration, about how astronomers “wish never to raise their eyes from those pages, as if this great book of the universe had been written to be read by nobody but Aristotle, and his eyes had been destined to see for all posterity.” * So, imagine his enthusiasm when he first used his new contraption to view our cosmos. His telescope model was a vast improvement over the spyglass that a Dutch optician had created the year before. Initially providing up to 8 times the magnification, Galileo quickly scaled his refractive telescope to provide up to 30 times more magnification. This is the first documented use of the telescope. What he saw made him realise the immensity of what he was beholding. His initial discovery was that the milky way was actually a conglomeration of innumerable stars. It was so expansive that his tired fingers would never be able to map every bright light the way his predecessors had done. He then saw the cratered surface of the moon, which, far from being perfectly spherical, was, in fact, full of

cavities and mountains much like our planet. Soon, he would note that Jupiter had four moons of its own (almost 79 in total have been discovered today). Like our moon, he also realised that Venus had phases, sometimes waxing to a disk and in another waning to a crescent. Not realising the error of staring at the Sun too long, he turned his magnified scope to the big bright star. His revelation? Sunspots and an imperfect sun. Each discovery built on the other, slowly and steadily chipping away at Aristotle’s system and coming dangerously close to the revolutionary view of his inspiration Nicolaus Copernicus—that Earth did indeed travel around the Sun. While Galileo’s telescope was a success, his theories received widespread condemnation for being ‘false and contrary to scripture’. Some who did deign to use the telescope to view the skies still disbelieved their own eyes. Records of a Bohemian scholar named Martin Horky have found mentions like “below, it works wonderfully; in the sky, it deceives one”*. Unfortunately for Galileo, magical thinking and ignorance won the tug of war between ordinary perception and scientific revelation. Even with sufficient proof, his ideology, while taking a grip on the scientific community, took a few more years to become part of the accepted norm.

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wish never to raise their eyes from those pages, as if this great book of the universe had been written to be read by nobody but Aristotle, and his eyes had been destined to see for all posterity.

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A New Era of Astronomy Is Born The telescope, though, continued to be refined. Better reflective models came to be, and our view of the cosmos only continued to expand. Improvements of his invention have led humans to discover that not just this planet but eight other planets (okay, maybe just seven) elliptically trace a path on a star that is halfway through its lifetime. Science certainly owes a 400-yearold debt to this man, who, with a wooden tube and some polished lenses and a critical and inquisitive mind, paved the way for humanity to trace its beginnings and helped expand our vision astronomically. Astronomers have now mapped billions of stars and galaxies that have coalesced, light-years away, in the darkened gloom of our universe. They have observed the powerful gravity of a black hole and even persevered in searching for signs of life in exoplanets that have circled nearby stars. All this and more have been supported by the advent of more powerful telescopes, ones not bound on land but floating in the ever-expanding cosmic space.

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The Search for EARTH 2.0

The telescope’s advents and the new knowledge we have gained have only served to fuel our curiosity even more. What’s the reason for our cosmic loneliness? Are there any more earths out there? How many far-flung planets exist that could harbour life as we know it? . Telescopes like NASA’s Hubble and Kepler have already provided us evidence of billions of galaxies, each containing stars much like our Sun. We have also devised telescopes that help us study objects in the universe by detecting the heat or radio waves or X-rays they emit. In the fall of 2021, we are already looking towards a launch that could significantly expand the vision of what we can see.

All to answer just one question – In about 100 billion galaxies and counting, could there be another Earth with life forms like ours? But what’s the point, one may ask? Because that’s what science is all about! It’s an amalgamation of dreamers, thinkers and doers who dare to imagine what the ordinary man could not conceive. The search for even an ounce of slime on some planet could revolutionise biology; water on a distant planet could give us clues on our molecular DNA, all of which is a worthy agenda for the foreseeable future. And so scientists relentlessly work at it, one matter at a time, hoping someday we could answer the quintessential questions on our cosmic loneliness.

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VIBHA SONI

ETHICAL DILEMMA: A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

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Hook Why do we often negatively describe Artificial Intelligence’s Dilemma? Are we not using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to simplify tedious and time-consuming tasks? Are companies not using chatbots for lead generation? There are multiple similar examples, so why not discuss the positive (or white) side of AI’s Ethical Dilemmas.

Introduction Like any other technology, AI has its strength and weakness. AI has changed both our personal and professional lives with its exciting features. Although, there are concerns regarding the ethical values embedded in AI systems. In this article, I would discuss the positive side of the five major ethical concerns associated with Artificial Intelligence technology.

Artificial Intelligence’s Ethical Concerns and Their Positive Side

Biased Outcomes

Biased outcomes are considered to be the major AI dilemma. Let us first understand what biased outcomes are? AI bias is an output inconsistency generated by machine algorithms. The prejudiced assumptions during algorithm designing or while training the data are the main reasons behind this inconsistency. We mostly assume that AI bias an anomaly. For example, when we search keywords like “great leaders” or “powerful personalities” in search engines, we get a list of eminent males rather than females. The generated search result has been labeled as “AI bias”. In other words, AI-based systems have been giving high priority to men as compared to women. It occurs because of the bias training in the system that uses predictive analysis and a powered algorithm. The training generates data based on historical data sets provided to the system. The search engine’s results are based on user clicks that depend on locations, preferences, and choices. Where is the gap? The gap is due to certain images regarding women’s presence in the digital world. The system is not prioritizing genders and generating search results of any query in a few seconds. Looking at the positive side, we are getting search results in a few seconds because of an AIbased system. For instance, if we search “richest people” in any search engine, we are getting accurate output because AI developers created the algorithm that is based on real facts. Instead of putting questions on biased outcomes, think that the outcome is the result of reality. Developers are putting effort while designing advanced algorithms, extracting critical information from historical data, and building those data sets. The developers are making patterns based on actual data. Earlier, some algorithm trained data favoring male nominees. Although things have been changing, the developers are now creating a neutral data set. If we can ignore some specific gender bias output, we can focus on how fast we get search results because of AI systems. 60

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Autonomous Vehicle / Carrier

The autonomous vehicle or carrier is an excellent advancement of artificial intelligence. We know the concept of an autonomous environment; it senses the surroundings and makes decisions without human intervention. For instance, autonomous mobile robots operate without any human administrator based on specific training. Companies have already adopted these robots to reduce laborious tasks in their factories. During the COVID period, various robots were developed to help patients while reducing direct human interaction; following social distancing protocol was a need, even for medical professionals. The autonomous car senses the environment and moves robotically. The autonomous car reduces accidents, traffic congestion, and fuel consumption because of in-built sensors and other technologies. It further results in reduced CO2 emissions. The autonomous car offers various benefits, especially to elders and people with disabilities. Developers collect a massive amount of data to understand the driving environment and build an autonomous driving system that processes them to make decisions while driving. The ethical dilemma occurs while making critical decisions in case of travel emergencies. Suppose a human being jumps in front of an autonomous car suddenly, leading to an accident. It would be assumed that the vehicle was at fault. Although, in the same scenario with a normal car, the man who jumped suddenly would be blamed for the accident. The contraction between a car with driver and a driverless car causes an unneeded dilemma ahead of us. The autonomous carrier is enhancing lives and making things easier. The world is accepting autonomous vehicle-based transportation systems because of the great advantages they offer. We could conclude that the positive side of autonomous vehicles must have high weightage than the opposing side.

Unemployment

AI tools, machine learning algorithms, and advanced robots have already replaced humans in the workplace. Automation in factories, automated scheduling systems, advanced software, marketing analytics, and chatbots have replaced time-consuming and complex business processes. As AI grew more sophisticated, it is now difficult to tell if you are chatting with a bot or human. Though artificial intelligence offers numerous ways to make life easier, it causes concern about unemployment. “Is my job safe for the next few years considering the automation?”, this question bothers a lot of people. An increased rate of unemployment is one of the biggest ethical dilemmas associated with advanced technologies. According to the World Economic Forum report, 85 million jobs will be displaced, while 97 million new jobs will be created worldwide by 2025 because of AI automation. AI will require businesses and governments to collaborate on massive reskilling and upskilling initiatives to help employees retrain and prepare for new and future jobs. 61

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According to the World Economic Forum report, 85 million jobs will be displaced, while 97 million new jobs will be created worldwide by 2025 because of AI automation.

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Culture-based Ethical Dilemma

Breakthrough development in AI has brought another ethical dilemma in the Art industry. We can create a copy of the original artwork designed by a human being using AI tools and techniques. For this, Al algorithms analyses existing arts, and upscaling, prepares an exclusive database. Ethical questions arise when we need to identify both arts and distinguish which one has been designed by humans and which one by machine. A similar incident happened in 2016 when a 3D printer and computer designed a Rembrandt painting named “The Next Rembrandt” after 351 years. If we think from a distinct perspective creating such an artwork would be an achievement for those artists, and through this, we can remember them. Today, we are all curious to know about history, art, and culture. We can take the help of AI to understand and make it memorable. Whenever the machine is designing existing artworks, designers must have to take permission from respective artists. The AI-based machine can only create similar copies; it can’t create a creative piece of art like a human artist. By designing the appropriate AI ethical rules while creating existing art, we can look back at our history and make the database for future generations.

AI in Judicial System

We all know that AI has entered every human space; it has changed many things and working styles. We have explored the entry of autonomous vehicles as a good indicator of growth. We are getting shopping options in a personalized manner on Amazon and other similar E-commerce websites. It is possible because developers create training data and build AI recommendation systems to provide equivalent recommendations. AI entered the judicial system, and we have a system that can evaluate the legal cases for making more accurate administrative and legislative decisions. The main reason to introduce AI in this area is to encourage effective counseling sessions and judicial proceedings. “Are AI-based judicial systems able to assess law cases and make decisions like a human being?” “Can these systems make better judgments?” These are the questions that provoke questions about the usage of AI in the Judicial system. Accepting machine-based judgment is a cause of concern. AI-based judicial systems can collect massive data, analyze relevant factors, and evaluate these efficiently. For a human being, it is tough to read a plethora of legal cases and other relevant factors. Lawyers can utilize this system to extract meaningful data while processing any case. By considering an AI-based judicial system as a supporting tool for lawyers, it is possible to overlook the dilemma. This support tool would help lawyers make better decisions after analyzing the AI-based systems’ decisions.

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How human mindset can ignore the black side of these dilemmas After discussing various examples and cases, we can conclude that these dilemmas are assumptions. Overlooking these dilemmas is better compared to augmenting its black side. We, humans, are developing these technologies and putting all our efforts into providing the best output. Irrespective of these efforts, it might be possible that AI will never make moral decisions. However, developers can use more accurate training data sets in AI systems to provide ethical outputs. Development of universal ethics would also support AI system usages without having doubts. These small changes would aid in focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses.

Recap A human being’s common nature always gives preferences to the “Black Side of technologies” and then analyzes the “White Side”. However, every human being depends on the technologies and tools for their personal and professional works. The ethical dilemmas of artificial intelligence are not created purposely. It is a flaw that could be ignored. On one side, people are demanding “drones”, “instant result list”, “autonomous car”, “medium for storing historical arts”. On the other side, they assume that these are unethical activities and raise unnecessary questions. So, rather than considering that these Artificial Intelligence dilemmas might harm us, we should think that these technologies are making our lives easy. “Always merits are superior to demerits”, so ponder before quest while using AI or other technologies.

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ANGELA STOJKOVIC

Artificial Intelligence: The Future is No How AI is all aro

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ow; ound und us

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oday, in 2021, we live in a reality in which it would be pretty hard to imagine a day without an increasingly sophisticated range of machines – for most of us, it is our phone, computer, tablet, or even a coffee machine without which our everyday routine would be almost unimaginable. But, as they have become a part of our routine, we usually don’t really stop to think about how incredible those little pieces of technology actually are and how they work.

Is AI The Breaking Point in the history of Humanity? So, even though these game changers quietly crawled under our skin and we don’t feel the rapid difference we have half-consciously embraced, it is a fact that we are witnessing a profound breakpoint in the history of humanity. Our lives are undeniably saturated with all sorts of devices that hold immense potential which arouses the biggest expectations and curiosities regarding the future by far. And let us not forget that all these types of devices we today perceive not just as a norm, but as a necessity, would have be (not that long ago) seen as robotic and extremely futuristic. Well, all these devices use AI, or Artificial Intelligence, to manage complex data and in order to be able to learn, and thus refine themselves through collecting information. When you think of it, that is pretty amazing, and it actually resembles our learning patterns and the basic principle of what we call intelligence altogether, but we will get to that a little later. The truth is that this brave new world is so incredible because of the speed at which the technology develops and the enormous gap between the picture of individual everyday life of today and that same picture 50, or 100 years ago. It is all happening so fast, but how did we get to this in the first place?

Anticipations of the Technological Era Dystopian novels from the last century like George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World depict a (not that far) future in which humans will be deprived of free will through drugs that navigate their satisfactory system in the brain and subdue them using short-term pleasure. On the other hand, as portrayed in 1984, we will face a reality in which humans suffer an inhibition of freedom summed in the infamous line Big Brother is watching you. This line refers to a totalitarian surveillance conducted through security cameras and other recognition and controlling advices. Nevertheless, even though we are past the years in which these stories took place and we can’t say that their “prophecies” came to life to the letter, a careful reader will catch on serious key philosophical points between the authors’ views of the future and modern life of today. Many perceive this stream of thought as a warning that someone out there is out to take over the world, but the truth is that this might be too big of an endeavor for a man or even a group of people and that they would need technologically advanced mechanisms to implement their plans. Hence the development of AI, the most promising concept in the world of technology. 68

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According to these theories, the fact that these mechanisms would be so widespread and get into the very pores of individual everyday life is what gives them the power to navigate values, politics, ethics, fashion, and many more aspects of people’s lives worldwide.

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Why AI is also the reason you are reading this article, far more than your conscious choice In a sea of articles about artificial intelligence, you didn’t go to page 35 of Google search and consciously chose this article to be your source of information about AI. According to a new behavioral user study, 50% of people who Google search click on one of the search results within 9 seconds, and 9% make it to the bottom of the first search page. What do you think, who (or what) does the selection of the first 5 articles (beyond which you probably won’t explore) that will be conveniently thrown in your face and make a choice of your information sources instead of you? Well, Search engine optimization AI has a role in this, especially when it comes to suggested content, as it analyzes the patterns and links between sites and is able to follow the popularity and recognition of content. Apart from this, AI also recognizes focal points of your interests based on which it can feed you with similar content that you won’t be able to resist. Then you find yourself after five hours wondering what the hell it is you’re doing?! You know, story as old as time… or maybe not?

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Where Can We Find AI? The truth is that what defines modern life as “modern” is an almost overnight advance of technology, and the base of the future technology is AI, as the “intelligence” part itself involves potential autonomy of machines, so that they will be able to solve tasks, function on their own, and even bring to life new, autonomous intelligent mechanisms. Even though most of people associate AI with humanoid robots, Artificial Intelligence is way more widespread from the area of robotics: AI is literally all around us! – • • • • • • •

In our hands (in the form of our phones, only Siri itself is an AI mechanism), In our cars (navigation and Google maps use AI), In all of our social media (Facebook uses AI for collecting and managing data, as well as for face recognition – for example, Facebook can recognize and tag your friends on your photos; Instagram and YouTube use AI for suggestions and e-mail filters spam using AI) in the world’s quickest, smartest and most available encyclopedia – Google, in our health systems, in our payment systems, even in some of our washing machines.

Experts are even more ambitious when it comes to the future of AI, as they are working on implementing AI in areas like the traffic, kitchen, sports, construction and fire department along with other jobs that are life endangering, etc. In fact, smart, self-driving cars like Tesla are already in use, and AI has already entered our kitchens from the mechanisms that can generate recipes from photos, to an actual robot that can cook.

“Meet Alfred, a robot that can help out in the kitchen!”

Source: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/05/business/meet-alfred-robot-who-can-helpout-kitchen/ 72

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And when it comes to all AI devices, they’re still learning, and we are all helping them with that. For example, one of the purposes of the “prove you are not a robot” tests on Google is AI learning.

Twitterati Unite to Speak up Against the Inconveniences caused by reCaptcha!

Source: https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/06/internet-users-unite-to-speak-upagainst-the-inconveniences-caused-by-recaptcha.html The Harward Gazette released an article called “Imagine a world in which AI is in your home, at work, everywhere”, but the truth is that AI already is everywhere and anywhere you turn, only in let’s say, baby forms.

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Is AI dangerous? The concept of AI itself possesses immense potential and possibilities. Many experts today suggest that once this kind of technology is improved to the point it passes the line after which the intelligence can further create new patterns and solve new problems on its own - the behavior that was artificially created will not be predictable, comprehensible, or controllable anymore. This is exactly what many are afraid of when it comes to the development of AI, both nonprofessionals and experts. The most sensitive questions that make the progress of AI a controversial topic are ethical problems and a possibility that AI will replace humans in some lines of work. On the other hand, the majority of the field’s specialists argue that creating a truly human-like intelligence is as far as it is complex. To begin with, we don’t even fully understand how our own intelligence functions beyond the principles of neuronal communication. Humanizing machines is all the rage amongst some of the most valued minds of today and it seems like mechanical and electrical engineering, hand in hand with computer science might replace science as we know it altogether, as science fundamentally examines nature and its laws. Perhaps we have scooped dry the essence of the nature around us (or at least our epistemological potentials to grasp it and came to a point where it is time to make our own, new one. After all, God is often described as a form of super-intelligent being that created such a complex and perfect organic structure as the world that we are a part of. In the light of the vast technological improvement, some argue that it wouldn’t be impossible that even the world we know isn’t the most complex known algorithm, a Matrix-like simulation. 75

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Conclusion We are the generation that is witnessing the rise of technology at its full strength and that whatever happens in the future, it will more than partly be our responsibility and a direct consequence of our reactions to these rapid changes, or a lack of those same reactions. And the only way to make a decision is to be conscious, awake, to think – which is exactly what we are now working so hard to teach these AI creations… But it seems that we ourselves tend to forget it somewhere in the process, or in between of communicating with some of the forms of AI that surround us and consume our attention, time and life.

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RITAM 77

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itam was 21 when he founded the India Film Project from his hostel room. IFP, as its fans fondly call it, started as a 50-hour filmmaking challenge with 600 participants in 2011 and went on to become the world’s largest filmmaking challenge with 36,000 participants in 2019 under Ritam’s vision. From its humble beginnings, IFP has established itself as one of the largest content festivals globally, participated and attended by over 65,000 people annually from over 30 countries. IFP currently is a community of 7.5 lac filmmakers, writers, storytellers, musicians, photographers, and creators from various backgrounds. Featured by Forbes recently, Ritam has been a TEDx speaker and a guest speaker at various forums talking about marketing, films, and entrepreneurship at events, startup, IPs, and MBA colleges. He is a mentor and consultant for few media startups and previously a columnist in DNA. He has been World Economic Forum’s chosen Global Shaper in the past. When not at work, he is found between his love for Lego, Hot Wheels, and drones.

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We talk with him about his journey with IFP and how technology could assist his vision of going globally with his idea.

How did the idea of IFP first strike you? When did you conceptualize it?

The India Film Project (IFP) idea came somewhere around 2010 when I stayed with filmmakers. I witnessed their daily struggles to find collaborations. We had planned a project together, but it wasn’t executed. I found a slight gap between what the industry was offering versus how people were shaping up. I think that was one of the initial beginnings for me to conceive something that can bring filmmakers together. Since I was a kid, I have always watched many videos and international cinema. I had this entire notion that videos were a compelling medium. People whom I haven’t meet, I could see them and feel their emotions out in videos. Probably the thought that was in the corner of my head came alive when I saw a lot of filmmakers trying to do something essentially to create videos - and I thought, what if I can make a platform that can help them.

How had you planned for IFP to evolve over years? Has it been like you had planned?

To be honest, I never planned IFP the way it has been growing. We have been planning one year at a time for the last ten years. The scenario has been very dynamically changing. In 2011, people wanted to become engineers and doctors, and a very few people wanted to be a filmmaker, mainly as a hobby. Now in 2021, people want to explore the creative field, and that’s a massive change in the industry. We believed that instead of planning and having a vision for the next five years, what if we understand the creators every year, understand the changing thought processes, and then plan the India Film Project (IFP) in a very tailor-made way for that particular year. I think that has helped us be very flexible with the changes coming up and probably give us an edge because each year, we go to the drawing board and rethink what new we want to do this year. As an organization, we foresee what we want to do in the next three years in terms of business, growth, and community.

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Can you tell us about the various technologies involved in film making and how has the usage of technological tools changed over the past few years? If you had asked me this question five years back, I would have told you that there are a lot of technologies involved in filmmaking, right from choosing the camera to scripting software to post-production software to editing software to music software - a lot of things go behind making a film. It was always a complicated and costly process, and hence a very few people could become filmmakers and create films. Nowadays, people can create content and record it with a smartphone; I don’t think anyone needs to think about the various technological tools. DSLRs have changed how we capture the world around us and make films that tell stories that have a different tangent altogether. It has given people the power to live in small towns and not always come from well-to-do families to tell a story. I don’t think the equipment will matter anymore, and that will be the case with almost every technology used in the filmmaking process. The prime importance is to the content you create. .

Why did you choose only the digital platform for IFP? Wouldn’t television or radio shows gain more popularity?

Now we are definitely expanding to different platforms. IFP started as a festival that was an on-ground experience. In 2015, we decided that the festival has to grow while staying the way it is an on-ground experience; we began increasing the social community via social media platforms. In recent years, we have grown drastically in terms of television and radio shows. We have our own national radio show and two other shows, IFP Shorts and IFP Offshoot, telecasted weekly on MTV (a television channel). We are now expanding away from digital platforms into new means, and I believe that’s how the world is going to be shaped. Businesses would no longer survive on a single platform, but they are going to be in a multidimensional content outlet, and that’s what we are now trying to become.

Do you believe that the increased usage and ease access of smartphones and the internet has helped your idea reach a wider range of audience?

The core idea of IFP as a festival and community is to celebrate where people create, come together, and collaborate. Humans as a species have always deferred from other species because of our ability to create things. We started innovating things with science and arts, and that’s how we reached to become what we are today. The core concept of the India Film Project is how to enable people to create more. More than the digital access, the increased popularity of creating content is what I think has benefitted the film industry. For instance, if you meet a 17 or 18-year-old who wants to become creators, they create fashion content or vlogs, or travel content. At least they try; even if they don’t pick it up as a profession, they are still trying to create something, which is our primary goal. 80

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Nowadays, people can create content and record it with a smartphone;

I don’t think anyone needs to think about the various technological tools.

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How do you organize these workshops (in which platform)? Have you ever faced a technical glitch? If so, how did you overcome it?

The virtual Festival that we organized last year was on a platform specially designed to host IFP. Our team and ticketing partner, Hubilo, developed the platform from scratch, which could host more than 1.5 lac people and involve a lot of interaction. The idea was not to become a Zoom thing; the idea was to probably replicate the on-ground experience into a digital form in a more extensive form. Suppose you go to the platform (it’s still available). In that case, it has almost all the features that an on-ground festival has, e.g., stalls, spaces to meet new people, gaming experiences, etc. The motive has been to create a rock-solid platform, which is our own and probably not dependent on third-party platforms. Answering your question about technical glitches, I think whether you have an onground or online festival, if it is even one percent dependent on technology, there are high chances that it will have some glitch. I think the glitch is part and parcel of every execution now, and I see it as a usual way and not as a technical problem. Though we have never hit a large glitch because what we have been following ever since we’ve gone digital is - we will test everything robustly before making it go live, even if it means that you need to invest a lot of resources in resting. You can’t put out a half-baked product for people, so I think the more we test, the lesser the glitch we usually encounter.

COVID has hugely affected the entire film industry. What’s the impact of the pandemic on the IFP platform? What new strategies did you implement to overcome it? The biggest impact COVID had on us is that we couldn’t do the festival on-ground like each year. IFP festival is always about the experience of meeting new people. Fortunately, the internet broke the barrier for us, people from more than 42 countries could participate and attend the festival this year. It was a significant accomplishment for us because not everyone can find time and energy to travel to Bombay to attend the festival. It also meant that we had to focus on a lot of things that creators were suddenly going through. 83

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Many creators were going through a phase of having no work, minimal money to survive, difficulty exploring new opportunities, and finding it even more difficult to tweak themselves in the current times. We, as a community, thought about how we could do something to help them sell solve this problem. We had to design many programs that were about focusing on the creator’s mental health and creating collaborative spaces so that creators who couldn’t meet otherwise could actually use IFP as a platform to collaborate. With Covid, we had to change and, pivot a lot of new things. The good part is that we have also explored virtual as a space for conducting festivals and got to understand the new side of the creator community both of them have proved that we have become even more empathetic about the creator ecosystem. Now, we also probably now know how to put technology to a better use.

How do you track the entries for the virtual events? Do you track the people who join your workshops? All the entries that come in for the virtual festival is through a new platform that we built. This was a ticketed entry so every time someone bought ticket, we could actually find it and track it.

Going forward, what is your vision for IFP in the next decade and what

role would emerging technologies be playing in executing that vision?

The vision is to take IFP as a content community and as a festival across multiple continents. We found that creators almost everywhere don’t have a rock-solid ecosystem for them; they don’t have a community that is continuously striving for them, which is what we want to become. So, the idea is to probably engage with more international creators and reach to them using IFP as a medium. 84

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AISHVARYA KARTHIKEYEN

Education Technology Innovations and Their Role in the

C VID World 85

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“Necessity is the mother of all inventions” fits aptly for the technological innovations that were brought together by COVID-19 pandemic.

2020

was a year of struggles for many. People were confined to their homes. Students were missing their traditional learning spaces, and the economy was sinking with no vaccine. Especially the educational innovations that surfed in the world at the time of need.

Learning at your Ease Research proves that virtual learning provided better memory retention compared to regular classes. With learning at ease, students are also inquisitive about all the technologies and applications. The brain being exposed to creative visuals makes learning exciting both for children and their parents.

Traditional to Artificial Virtual - The New Intelligence Educational shift and Internet of Things Traditional age-old education systems have always shown resistance to change until the COVID pandemic knocked them down with no other options. The teachers who never supported online classes and tutoring have now become a crucial part of E-teaching. Though many companies like Google, Zoom, Microsoft, etc., provide the necessary resources for a successful online class, little did we know about the technology-based AI learning systems. This article helps you understand the innovations that have turned the traditional educational system into a modern advanced learning mode.

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When speaking of innovation, let us not forget the foremost frontrunner of all technologies, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). Students can get customized lessons curated according to their learning speed with this incredible technology. This might not be possible in traditional classes, and it has shown proven benefits, especially in shy and humble kids. Educational systems like schools and colleges are benefitted using AI platforms. Many schools have incorporated AI in their system. It has helped in the research and to analyze the insights on teaching methods. Technologies like AI now inspire many ways of teaching.

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OTHER TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS THAT YOU SHOULD LOOK OUT IN THE NEAR FUTURE AI replacing teachers During the quarantine period, many got to know about the value of video learning platforms and how they can help students study. Many students searched their lessons’ names on YouTube to see if there is an easy video explaining the topic that they did not understand entirely. The most shocking thing is that video learning platforms work like a charm for understanding the subject more easily. There might be a possibility where AI can take over the job of teachers.

Persuasive lessons that help the students Teachers have always dealt with students from different backgrounds. An experienced teacher knows what to do and when to do when it comes to handling a class. But one thing that makes AI more favorable is its sense of persuasion, even though it's just a machine. The attractive images, the soothing voice, and the engaging content they offer can easily capture both students’ and parents' attention.

Social Virtual Reality chat spaces for students to learn and discuss The one common disadvantage that everyone talks about Artificial Intelligence is people will not have a chance to interact with other human beings. They will not learn to socialize with others. Social Virtual Reality offers chat spaces not just for fun and interaction, but also for learning and discussing. What is better than having a study buddy online? 89

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Many schools have incorporated AI in their system. It has helped in the research and to analyze the insights on teaching methods. Technologies like AI now inspire many ways of teaching.

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Recorded lessons for future reference A human's attention span is 30 minutes maximum. A traditional class takes up to 45- 55 minutes. Even the studious student will get distracted after a while. This, in turn, might make them miss out on lessons. How many days would we all have come to our home after class and try to remember the learning block we missed. But with technology, you get the recorded lessons. You can refer to it anytime at your own pace.

Graphics incorporated in the study lessons Imagine yourself as a kid in a college library. What book will you be interested in? Obviously, the one with more graphic materials and images. Even though a kid might not read a book, he/she will love to look at the illustrative pages. This will, in turn, make them inclined towards learning.

Cost-saving educational lessons Many parents spend an enormous amount of money on their children's education. Apart from the education, you get charged additionally for the commute, books, and other services provided by the school/college. But with technology, Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality platforms are affordable and are easy to handle. What will you choose? A better education that is super affordable, with the best quality content that students love, or a costly school education system where you learn the same thing repeatedly. Now that I have explained all these, the ball is in your court! How wonderful will it be if your children would love to learn and get good grades? Feels good, right? This can be possible with adaptive learning that provides engaging, fun, and creative content that is easy to learn. Many Indian start-ups now realize the importance of technology in the field of education. With time we will realize what it holds for the student’s future. There is an app for everything when it comes to education that is using AR, VR, and AI technologies where learners are put in charge. We shouldn't depend on crises like COVID to rethink Education. Technology has changed the way students learn. Teachers are not just teaching but also guiding students to learn innovatively using technology. This will help the students to be self-reliant. At the end of the day, students should be eager to learn using innovations.

Let us hope that the education technologies that surfaced during COVID remains and grows in the future.

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PHANI TEJA

BITCOIN -

THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL CURRENCY?

Terms like Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and Blockchain Technology are widely used daily and are quite intimidating in this digital era! Since its inception, Bitcoin’s success has skyrocketed, and more people are getting invested in cryptocurrencies.

But have you ever wondered what cryptocurrency and Bitcoin are? And why so many people are obsessed with it, and what does the future hold for Bitcoin?

Then continue reading to quench your thirst for knowledge!

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What is Cryptocurrency, and Why is it so popular?

Some of the popular ones are:

Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that is decentralized, transparent, and encrypted using cryptography.

Here are some of the reasons why cryptocurrency is so popular:

Cryptography is the method of encrypting the data or message in a manner that it can only be read by the user who has access to a unique key required for decrypting the message. There are over 4000 cryptocurrencies globally.

•Bitcoin •Ethereum •Binance Coin •XRP •Tether •Dogecoin

•It is a decentralized currency that means banks or central authorities neither issue it nor are any intermediaries involved in the transactions. •Verification of transactions is made easy with the help of hashing algorithms – this also aids in creation of a secure network. •The supply of few cryptocurrencies (ex: Bitcoin, Litecoin, DASH etc.) is limited, making it rare and ensuring that its value remains stable for years to come.

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What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency developed in the year 2008-09 by a person or group of persons under the name “Satoshi Nakamoto”. The person’s true identity has remained unknown until now. It is a decentralized and transparent digital currency that can be transferred from one individual to another through the peer-to-peer network without intermediaries such as banks or administrators. Since there is no intermediary involved, the transactions are verified by network nodes using cryptography, and the transaction data is stored in a huge database utilizing a technology called the blockchain. Bitcoin’s circulation varies from that of traditional fiat currencies. Each block that is added to the blockchain network adds a total of 6.25 Bitcoins per circulation. There are exactly 21 million Bitcoins in the world, with over 18 million of them already in use right now.

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Blockchain- The Technology Behind Bitcoin Blockchain is a huge database that is public (or private), secured, and decentralized. It is the same technology used by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for storing the transaction details.

In a blockchain, a group of transaction details or ledgers are bundled into a block. These blocks are linked to the previous block using a virtual chain (technically linked list); hence the technology is termed blockchain. Below are the four main components of a blockchain ecosystem: •Peer-to-Peer Network •Cryptography

contains details of each transaction, it is crucial to protect the data. Consensus Algorithm: Consensus algorithms are required for unanimously agreeing on when, how, and by whom will a new block be added into the blockchain. There are various consensus algorithms. The most commonly used consensus mechanism is Proof-of-Work (PoW).

In a blockchain network that uses the PoW algorithm, if a miner wants to add a •Consensus Algorithms new block to the existing blockchain, he/ she has to solve a complex mathematical •Virtual Machines puzzle that requires a lot of computational Peer-to-Peer network: It is crucial to have power. Once the puzzle is solved, a new a peer-to-peer network (also called a node block is added to the blockchain network, application) consisting of different nodes and the miner receives a block reward. or computers linked to each other so that Bitcoin uses the PoW mechanism. information (ledger or TX message in case Virtual Machines: A virtual machine is a of bitcoin) can be shared remotely. logical component of a node application Cryptography: In order to preserve the that every user of the blockchain confidentiality, authenticity, integrity, ecosystem runs. and non-repudiation of the data in the The fundamental idea behind a virtual blockchain, cryptography is used. machine is to combine the hardware of a Cryptography is the method of encrypting single computer (the CPU, memory, disk a message (in ciphertext) such that drives, network interface, etc.) and making message can only be read by the it run on different computers irrespective authorized person with a unique key. of its operating system (Windows, Linux, This prevents any malicious activity in a MacOS, etc.). blockchain ecosystem. As the network

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How do Bitcoin’s Transactions work? There are three steps involved in bitcoin transactions: •Signing •Broadcasting •Validation Signing: When a sender clicks the send button to send bitcoins, the wallet generates a transaction message (also called TX message). A TX message contains basic details of the sender, receiver, and the amount being sent. After generating the TX message, it generates a unique digital signature of the sender by mixing it with a private key (password for your bitcoins). These digital signatures are unique for each transaction, ensuring the transaction’s security. Broadcasting: In this step, the TX message is sent to various devices (also called nodes) that hold a copy of the transaction details. These devices check if the transactions are legitimate and whether the user has enough funds in his account to complete the transaction. Once all nodes in the network verify the transactions, they are stored in Memory Pool (Mempool). Mempool stores the details of transactions that are verified but not yet completed. Validation: This is the stage where transactions get confirmed. Bitcoin mining is a crucial step for confirming the transactions. Miners group the TX messages residing in the Mempool into a single block of transaction. Miners then compete to solve complex mathematical calculations (POW -consensus algorithm) to add a new block to the blockchain. Computational power is required to solve complex mathematical equations. Once the miner wins the competition his/her block of transactions is added into the blockchain, thus changing the transaction status to confirmed/completed. According to a report, a new block is added to the network every 10 minutes.

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Pros and Cons of using Bitcoin:

There has been an exponential rise in the popularity of Bitcoin among investors and techenthusiasts in recent times. However, there are mixed reactions related to the usage of bitcoin. Bitcoin has it’s shares of positives and negatives. Let’s discuss some of them as you read along.

Pros:

• One of the major benefits of using bitcoin (or any other cryptocurrency) is that it is decentralized. It helps maintain the currency, monopoly free such that no central authority or organization can control the value and the flow, unlike the regular fiat currencies. • It isn’t easy to decode the blockchain ledger, which ensures high security and privacy than any other electronic transaction. It has also been reported that the whole Bitcoin network has not been hacked since 2008-09. • Bitcoin transactions charge very low transaction fees to the users. It is improbable for a bitcoin transaction to charge more than 1% as a transaction fee compared to other digital payments that charge around 1% to 2% on average. • In this digital age, most users have access to mobile phones, laptops, and the internet, making Bitcoin transactions highly accessible. • If a server goes down, standard payment methods like credit and debit cards can take several days to process, whereas bitcoin servers barely go down, providing hassle-free transactions.

Cons:

• It is observed that bitcoins are used for illegal transactions such as buying drugs and weapons on the dark web. The bitcoin (or cryptocurrency) transactions are highly secured; it will be nearly impossible for the central governments to track down such users by their wallet addresses alone. • Bitcoins are not recognized as a legitimate exchange by many companies. Only a few online merchants are accepting them as payment. • Bitcoin is very volatile in nature due to which the value of bitcoin is not fixed, and hence it would not be advisable to use it as a mode of payment; instead, one can use it as an investment asset. • In case an individual forgets the password of his/her account, then there is no way of recovering it. This will result in loss of his/her bitcoins. • Mining Bitcoin requires a large amount of computing power and electricity, which could negatively impact the environment.

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Bitcoin’s Current Situation Globally

Currently, bitcoin valuation is clocked at $55,831 USD. There has been a gradual increase in the popularity of bitcoin since 2008-09, which in turn increased bitcoin’s valuation over the years. There can be many reasons for the increased popularity of bitcoin and its value globally. Some of them are: • Companies like Tesla, Square, MicroStrategy have invested in Bitcoin as an investment asset. • Some companies have started accepting Bitcoin as a mode of payment (ex: PayPal). • More people are trading bitcoins due to new cryptocurrency platforms, which makes selling and buying bitcoins easier. • The belief shown by some central governments in blockchain and bitcoin has motivated more people to begin investing in Bitcoin. • Limited circulation of bitcoins raises concerns about supply shortages and increased demand, resulting in a higher valuation.

Bitcoins Situation Countrywise

Investing in bitcoin is straightforward, but things get complicated once we start treating bitcoin as a mode of payment due to the variety of regulations and rules maintained by different countries. Let’s have a look at the situation in various countries: • Netherlands: The capital city Amsterdam is home to the largest cryptocurrency startups. According to a report in 2020, around 1 million Dutch people have already invested in cryptocurrency. There are over 74 merchants accepting bitcoins. Bitcoin ATMs are also found frequently, making it one of the most loved countries for bitcoin users. • USA: The US has broadly adopted a positive approach to Bitcoin, while some federal departments are working on preventing or reducing Bitcoin usage for illicit transactions. Many American-based tech companies have already started investing and accepting bitcoin as payment. • India: In 2020, Indian Supreme Court lifted the ban on bitcoin exchanges which refrained individuals from converting their bitcoin into INR. Now Indians can start investing in bitcoin through different exchanges. But it is still not accepted as a legal tender. However, India is planning to regulate the usage and come with its own cryptocurrency. • European Countries: The European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared that digital currency transactions are considered as supply of service and are also exempted from VAT in all EU states. • Russia: The use of Bitcoins as a payment method for products is regarded as unconstitutional. 10 0

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• Australia: They have shown a positive attitude towards Bitcoin and cryptocurrency generally. Australia has legalized cryptocurrency exchanges to some extent. • China: China doesn’t encourage Bitcoin as a legal tender and has some strict policies against cryptocurrencies. They have also brought a law into action to stop Bitcoin mining. However, one can continue investing in Bitcoin through different exchanges.

COVID 19 Impact on Bitcoin: Even though COVID 19 had a severe impact on the Global Economy, Bitcoin proved resistant. The value of Bitcoin was halved in March 2020, but currently, it has reached an all-time high. The major reason was the loss of jobs during the pandemic, resulting in many people investing in Bitcoin to earn a side income. Many people get intimidated by the term cryptocurrency and the technology behind it, which led to creating jobs like crypto-influencers and technical analysts. Their job is to bring awareness about cryptocurrency and blockchain and encourage people to invest in them. We could conclude that the pandemic has positively impacted and encouraged other investors to start investing in it even during times of uncertainty.

What can we expect from Bitcoin in the Future? With the ever-increasing popularity of Bitcoin, the first question that comes up in our mind is, Will Bitcoin ever be the “Future Currency” that is accepted globally? Bitcoin has the potential to change the global financial industry and the way we look at currency in the future. The popularity of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is going enormously globally, and many users are adopting bitcoin as an investment asset and mode of payment. It is estimated that there will be around 200 million users utilizing digital currencies by 2030. With many users showing interest in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency and its advantages over fiat currencies, financial experts believe that Bitcoin can become a future global currency. Suppose the popularity of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies increases at the current pace. In that case, central banks around the world must take reasonable measures to embrace the fast-growing technology to ensure a crypto-friendly future. Some of the measures which can be implemented by the central banks are: • Regulating Bitcoin by imposing some restrictions to curb illegal activities. • Introducing own form of cryptocurrency, i.e., CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency). • Integrating cryptocurrency with the present payment platforms could be an efficient approach. Bitcoin’s future depends on the opinions of current banking structures and the amount of confidence people have in bitcoin. Only time will reveal whether Bitcoin will go on to become the single currency globally. 101

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Techfastly May 2021

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Unravelling the mysteries of the universe, with a wooden tube and a polished lens