Author: Satyen K Bordoloi

When Meta’s Chief AI scientist Yann LeCun was in India in October, he highlighted some interesting ideas about training AI and ML. Satyen K. Bordoloi delves into those and outlines how they could be game changers. Yann LeCun, VP and Chief AI Scientist at Meta – owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – was in India in the last week of October, giving lectures and holding interactions. He proposed some unique ideas. On October 22, delivering the “Prof. Subra Suresh Institute Lecture Series” at IIT Madras, Chennai, he said: “If you are interested in human-level AI, don’t work on LLMs.…

As AI evolves, its true potential will be realised when it can autonomously handle most of our digital tasks. Satyen K. Bordoloi explores recent AI advancements to spotlight the emergence of personal AI assistants. In the Marvel film series, Iron Man’s digital assistant, Jarvis, has complete control of Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit and digital life, completing tasks with voice commands. Though fictional, it is a benchmark for AI capabilities, with Google naming its latest AI tech designed to control web browsers and perform tasks like research and shopping, Project Jarvis. The advancements in AI have been astounding, but we…

Generative AI use in India has risen exponentially, finds Satyen K. Bordoloi as he delves into the reasons for this surge and the opportunities it presents for India. A rapper in Kartarpur, a wannabe Sidhu Moose Wala, uses her laptop and phone to produce a hip-hop track but lacks the funds for a sleek video. Someone tells her about TTV – text-to-video, the ability of AI systems to generate videos from text prompts. She subscribes to one for a month, shoots some good photos with her phone, animates them with TTV, and edits them with a friend into her first…

Silicon Valley is turning to nuclear power in a desperate bid to find the energy to power its electricity-guzzling AI technology. Satyen K. Bordoloi outlines the dangers of and the reasons for this trend When you ask about the biggest hurdles blocking faster development and deployment of artificial intelligence, most people think of research stagnation, hallucinations, consumer fatigue, or even excessive AI doomsdayism. Some, perhaps rightly so, talk of another AI winter around the corner. Rarely does anyone point to the actual problem: energy deficit. To understand how big a problem this is, consider what Washington Post reporters Pranshu Verma…

Two Nobel Prizes this year, one for developers of AI and the other for researchers using it, have sparked unnecessary controversy writes Satyen K. Bordoloi The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which selects Nobel Prize winners, stunned the world by awarding two prizes with AI connections this year. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to physicist John Hopfield, and computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton for their work in developing Artificial Intelligence. The Chemistry Nobel went to Professor David Baker of the University of Washington, and Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, co-founders of the AI firm DeepMind. This has divided the world. The…

Much like Kodak, Xerox, and Nokia before, four big tech companies missed the biggest opportunity of this decade: AI. Now, they are struggling to catch up, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. Not many know that Kodak invented the digital camera, or that Xerox invented the GUI, Ethernet, mouse, and PC among many other things that are the backbone of our digital lives. But they became so big, that they got comfortable with what they had, and this myopia took them to the brink of extinction. Image Courtesy: lexica.art When we talk of AI, we already have four aspirants who almost made…

As we concretise plans to build a colony on the Moon, real-time communication with that space real estate still eludes us, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. He finds setting up data centres on the Moon is the first step toward becoming a spacefaring ‘civilization’. In sci-fi, communication between planets was instantaneous even before it was so on Earth. Now that voice and video messaging is fast on Earth, our belief in space communications has shot-up. The truth is that transmission through the vast expanse of space is the final frontier before we become a spacefaring civilization. Voyager 1, travelling away from…

It is said AI in filmmaking will change cinema. Satyen K. Bordoloi argues that the opposite is also true as he outlines the amazing tools that deals like this could unleash into the world. In the 2002 film Awara Paagal Deewana, Akshay Kumar copies the lobby fight sequence from The Matrix. It was achieved by flying in the team that created the original to Mumbai. Naturally, it cost a bomb. Today, AI can achieve better quality at a fraction of the cost. A deal to make something like this possible, transforming both AI and filmmaking, was signed between Lionsgate and…

Amazon, the tech titan that reshaped retail, is late to the AI party. Satyen K. Bordoloi delves into why a key pioneer of our tech-driven lives took its time on AI and chatbots, and wonders if it can catch up. In a move that has surprised the tech world, Amazon, the e-commerce giant that revolutionized retail and reshaped how we interact with tech for over a quarter century, unveiled its own AI-powered shopping assistant. Called ‘Rufus’, you’ll find it on the extreme right bottom corner of your Amazon app. The astonishment was because this chatbot, still in its beta and…

That barely any content we consume is original, used to be a metaphysical and artistic angst, but with GenAI content in the mix for 2 years, researchers warn of a threat to AI itself, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. Few lines in literature have generated as much debate about their meaning as writer Chuck Palahniuk’s in Fight Club: ‘…everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.’ The protagonist says it, as he walks through life as a raging insomniac, unable to focus. The Hollywood film made the line and the book’s philosophy famous, but I don’t think anyone has…