Uploading Consciousness ??

HOPE is the most dangerous four-letter word. It can give you everything you need, and at the same time, take away all you have. This notion is pretty evident in the realm of media businesses, where hope is often utilised as a driving force.?

For instance, of late, many outlets have been talking about how by the end of this year, people will be able to ‘transfer their consciousness over to computers’, leveraging voice synthesis and video models, quoting an Indian-origin computer scientist.?

But, is it really true though?

“I am so upset about why I did that. Because it went out of context,” said?Pratik Desai, in an exclusive interview with?AIM.?

Clarifying the same, he said that when he was working in the US, his grandmother was eager to meet his newborn. Unfortunately, just weeks before they could meet her, she passed away. This regret haunted Desai. Sadly, he did not have any pictures or videos of his grandmother and that troubled him even more.

Ergo, the?viral tweet, where he suggested people to start recording their parents, elders and loved ones regularly. “With enough transcript data, new voice synthesis, and video models, there is a 100 percent chance that they will live with you forever even after leaving the physical body.”?

Further, given the rise in open-source voice synthesis and large language models, he said, it would be possible by the end of the year to train personalised data (audio, video, and image) of their loved ones, and?build digital avatars. “Like listening to bedtime stories in my grandmother’s voice,” shared Desai, adding that people took it in a completely wrong direction.?

Humbled, Desai even?apologised?to people on Twitter for hurting their sentiments, and said that he had learnt his lesson – i.e.?giving context before tweeting anything.

Moving past the controversy, let’s give context too. Desai is the founder of an agritech startup,?Titodi, where he has been instrumental in building AI products for the under-served India. He’s also the brain behind the most recent?KissanGPT, a GPT-powered platform for Indian farmers.?

Learn more about KissanGPT?here.

NLP Engineers in the Era of LLMs?

In the current times of LLMs-gone-wild, NLP engineers are most likely to be the first ones to see the repercussions of this shift. Up until now, the job description of an NLP engineer was a lengthy list of requirements. This included expertise in text representation, semantic extraction techniques, data structure and modelling.?

But now, the future of NLP engineers looks totally different.?Read more here.

Raspberry Pi, Anyone??

Ask any techie or hobbyist, and they will tell you how they built a super-cool gadget using Raspberry Pi. Now, imagine having more AI capabilities. Recently, the company?partnered?with Sony’s semiconductor division to bring a new line of Sony’s edge AI devices to the Raspberry Pi ecosystem.?

Raspberry Pi chief?Eben Upton?told?AIM?that until now people were using third-party accelerators such as the Google USB 3.0 accelerated device, which could be directly connected to Raspberry Pi, or doing the AI work on the CPU. He said: “For a lot of AI applications, the CPU is actually sufficient,” but, it has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.

But, now with the latest partnership with Sony, there is a whole new possibility in terms of bringing AI to edge devices.?Read the exclusive story here.

OpenAI’s Bug Bounty Trap

Against the backdrop of jailbreaks and safety concerns, the closed-door OpenAI has decided to take the open-source route with the launch of a bug?bounty program?for a price. The company claims to reward $200 for minor issues to $20,000 for exceptional discoveries. For this, it looks to seek help from its partners and collaborators, alongside ChatGPT users.

Learn more about OpenAI’s bug bounty program?here.