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India inks chip deal with Singapore as PM Modi pushes tech ambition

India inks chip deal with Singapore as PM Modi pushes tech ambition

by | Sep 5, 2024 | Technology


While India’s semiconductor industry is in its infancy, Singapore has played a significant role in the sector for decades | Photo: Bloomberg

3 min read Last Updated : Sep 05 2024 | 10:05 AM IST


By Gao Yuan and Philip J. Heijmans

 


India and Singapore agreed to ramp up collaboration in semiconductors and digital technologies, seeking a bigger role in a global chip supply chain being reshaped by tensions between the US and China.


During a two-day visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the city-state, the countries signed agreements to cultivate talent in chip design and manufacturing and facilitate Singaporean tech investment in India, according to a statement from the Indian government on Thursday. The nations will also work more closely together in cybersecurity, fifth-generation mobile networks, super-computing and artificial intelligence.


Singapore, India and Malaysia are among Asian economies that have emerged as beneficiaries of the prolonged US-China chip war that has rattled the global chip market, which is on track to hit $588 billion in sales this year. Both China and western countries are racing to establish stand-alone supply chains to avoid geopolitical risks, creating business opportunities for the industry.


While India’s semiconductor industry is in its infancy, Singapore has played a significant role in the sector for decades. The city-state is home to some of the largest chip manufacturing plants in Southeast Asia, hosting international names from NXP Semiconductors NV to Micron Technology Inc. The island nation boasts a legion of chip research and engineering talent as well as abundant venture capital for chip startups.


The tie-up also showcases Modi’s ambition to turn the world’s most populated country into a technology superpower, in which a strong semiconductor ecosystem is crucial. During his trip to Singapore he met with Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and is expected to meet with other key officials in the city-state. The two nations also signed deals in the areas of health, medicine and skills development.


Closer ties with India in semiconductors would help Singaporean companies to tap into the rapidly growing market in South Asia, Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan told reporters last month. “They know that although Singapore is very small, we have a disproportionate share of global semiconductor manufacturing capability, and they are carefully studying our system in terms of its ecosystem,” he said.


Modi’s government has set up a $21 billion plan to beef up semiconductor capabilities across the country, with a total of $15 billion worth of investment in chipmaking plants announced earlier this year. Singapore’s expertise in memory chips and matured logic processors, which are widely used in electronic devices and automobiles, could help India grow its chip industry at a faster pace.

First Published: Sep 05 2024 | 10:05 AM IST



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Advertisers abandon Elon Musk's X amid concerns over content and trust

Advertisers abandon Elon Musk's X amid concerns over content and trust

by | Sep 5, 2024 | Technology


3 min read Last Updated : Sep 05 2024 | 9:53 AM IST

More than a quarter of global advertisers are planning to reduce spending on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), due to growing concerns over content and trust in the information shared on the platform, according to new research by data firm Kantar.


Since Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the platform in October 2022, X has seen a steep decline in advertising revenue. Once heralded as a hub for “free speech,” the platform has struggled with controversies and advertiser dissatisfaction. Musk’s unpredictable behaviour and public statements, often shared with his nearly 200 million followers, have triggered a major pullback by advertisers wary of brand safety risks.


X: An unpredictable platform


Kantar’s research, which involved 18,000 consumers and 1,000 senior marketers globally, reveals that 26 per cent of marketers are planning to slash their ad budgets on X in 2025. This marks a sharp rise from the 14 per cent of marketers who planned similar cuts in 2024.


“Marketers are brand custodians and need to trust the platforms they use,” said Gonca Bubani, a director at Kantar. 


“X has changed so much in recent years and can be unpredictable from one day to the next. It is difficult to feel confident about your brand safety in that environment,” she added.


The exodus has been exacerbated by X’s declining global revenues. According to eMarketer, X peaked in 2021 with $4.46 billion in global revenues, including $366 million from the UK. By 2022, this had fallen to $4.14 billion, and with Musk’s takeover, revenues have more than halved. Projections for 2024 suggest that annual revenues could fall to $1.9 billion, with UK revenues shrinking to just $160 million.


“The trend of advertisers moving away from X has been ongoing for years, but the acceleration over the past 12 months suggests a turnaround is unlikely,” added Bubani.


X’s commercial woes have been compounded by other crises. The platform recently faced a ban in Brazil, one of its largest markets with over 20 million users. Brazil’s Supreme Court upheld the ban after X failed to comply with court orders to remove profiles spreading disinformation and refused to appoint a local legal representative.


Marketers’ trust in advertising on X has continued to plummet, with only 12 per cent expressing confidence in 2024, down from 22 per cent in 2022. A mere 4 per cent believe X offers brand safety.


Musk’s lawsuits against  global advertising firms


In response to the growing advertiser revolt, Musk has taken an aggressive stance. Last month, X filed a lawsuit against a global advertising alliance and major corporations such as Unilever, Mars, and CVS Health, accusing them of colluding to boycott the platform and intentionally causing revenue loss.


“We tried peace for two years, now it is war,” Musk wrote on X.

Despite these challenges, X maintains that advertisers are increasing their investment. A company spokesperson told The Guardian, “Advertisers know that X now offers stronger brand safety, performance, and analytics capabilities than ever before. Our brand safety rate is 99 per cent, as validated by DoubleVerify and Integral Ads Science, which is reflected by the fact that the majority of advertisers are increasing their investment in X, as shown by Kantar’s data.”

 

First Published: Sep 05 2024 | 9:53 AM IST



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US antitrust trial targets Alphabet, to challenge Google's ad business

US antitrust trial targets Alphabet, to challenge Google's ad business

by | Sep 4, 2024 | Technology


Google (Photo: Shutterstock)

4 min read Last Updated : Sep 04 2024 | 11:29 PM IST


Alphabet’s Google faces trial in a second antitrust case next week where the U.S. Department of Justice will challenge how the search giant monetizes advertising through a system that prosecutors say harms news publishers.


The case is part of the Biden administration’s effort to rein in Big Tech through antitrust law, and follows a major win for the Justice Department in a separate lawsuit on Aug. 5 when a judge found that Google illegally monopolized online search.

 


While that case focused on Google’s ubiquitous search engine, the trial beginning in Alexandria, Virginia, on Monday will home in on less conspicuous Google technology that connects website publishers and advertisers.

 


Those advertising tools contributed to the more than 75 per cent of Google’s $307.4 billion in revenue last year that came from advertising.

 


“Google is far and away the largest seller of advertising on earth. They touch every part of the industry, if not directly, then indirectly. Everyone has an interest in Google one way or another,” said Brian Wieser, an advertising consultant and financial analyst.

 


The Justice Department and a coalition of states will seek to show Google broke U.S. antitrust law in its digital advertising businesses. A victory for the states and Justice Department would set the stage for them to ask U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to order a breakup of the company.

 


The antitrust regulators accuse Google of dominating the markets for the technology behind website ads by tying its tools for publishers and advertisers together, staking out a “privileged position as the middleman.”

 


Google has denied the claims, saying it is not required to share technological advantages with rivals and that its products are interoperable with those offered by competitors.

 


The Justice Department alleges that Google controls 91 per cent of the market for ad servers, where publishers offer ad space, more than 85 per cent of the market for ad networks, which advertisers use to place ads, and over half of the market for ad exchanges.

 


Google says its share of those markets is 30 per cent or less when including advertising on social media, streaming TV and apps, and says the Justice Department’s narrow focus on website ads obscures the fierce competition it faces as those categories grow.

 


Google competitors on the advertiser side, such as Trade Desk and Comcast, and publisher side, such as PubMatic, are on the list of potential witnesses.

 


The case will also highlight how advertising technology has affected news organizations. One-third of newspapers in the U.S.


have been closed or sold since 2005, according to a Northwestern University study published last November.

 


“Journalism is under threat in large part due to consolidation in the advertising market,” Justice Department antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter said at an event held in June by the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly advocacy group.

 


Current or former executives from News Corp, the Daily Mail and Gannett, which has also sued Google, may testify at trial.

 


Google has focused on small businesses and publishers, some of whom it plans to call as witnesses at trial. A breakup would “slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder” for small companies to grow, Google has said.

 


The way Google viewed its ad tech will be a key focus at trial, with potential testimony from more than two dozen current or former employees and executives, including YouTube Chief Executive Neal Mohan, a former Google advertising executive.


(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Sep 04 2024 | 11:29 PM IST



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Tech wrap Sep 04: Intel AI chips, Pixel 9 Pro Fold sale, Music Search, more

Tech wrap Sep 04: Intel AI chips, Pixel 9 Pro Fold sale, Music Search, more

by | Sep 4, 2024 | Technology


4 min read Last Updated : Sep 04 2024 | 8:03 PM IST


American chipmaker Intel has introduced its new Core Ultra 200V series processors, also known as Lunar Lake chips. These processors are designed to compete with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 series processors for AI PCs.


Google has introduced new features for Android phones, tablets, and Wear OS watches. Among the updates, the American tech giant has announced the Circle to Search Music feature, along with other enhancements to the Android platform.


The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold smartphone is now available for purchase in India. Unveiled at the “Made By Google” event last month, this second-generation foldable device joins Google’s flagship series for the year, alongside the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, and Pixel 9 Pro XL. It is powered by Google’s Tensor G4 chip, featuring 16GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage.


GoPro has introduced two new cameras in India: the high-end GoPro HERO13 Black and the entry-level GoPro HERO. The GoPro HERO13 Black boasts features such as Magnetic Latch Mounting, GPS functionality, and swappable HB-series lens options. Meanwhile, the GoPro HERO is noted as the company’s smallest camera with a screen.


Google announced the official release of its new Android 15 operating system and is making the source code available on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). While this marks the end of the Android 15 beta testing phase, the new OS is not yet available to consumers.


Instagram is adding comments to stories on its platform. The social media company introduced the new feature, “Comments in Stories,” recently during the launch of Creator Lab in India and has confirmed it through a post on their official Instagram account.


Taiwanese electronics company MSI has unveiled a new lineup of laptops at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) 2024 in Berlin, Germany. The new range includes both gaming and business productivity laptops, powered by the latest Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) processors and AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series processors, each equipped with a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) for AI tasks.


China’s OnePlus is set to release its new entry-level Nord Buds 3 wireless earbuds on September 17. Before the launch, the company shared several key specifications of the earbuds.


Samsung released the Galaxy A06 entry-level smartphone in India on September 4th. As the newest member of the brand’s “A” series, this device is equipped with a MediaTek Helio G85 chipset and features a 5,000 mAh battery.


Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, is rolling out sponsored messages alongside chat threads from friends on the platform. In a note to employees, Snap’s CEO Evan Spiegel reflected on the company’s 13-year journey and outlined upcoming changes to the platform in the coming months.


The fine print in terms of use agreements, which many users overlook, often includes clauses that allow for such intrusive practices.


On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that the US Department of Justice has issued a subpoena to Nvidia as part of its expanding investigation into the company’s antitrust practices, according to sources familiar with the matter.


On Tuesday, social media giant Meta Platforms announced that it will disclose to Brazilians how it plans to use their personal data for training generative artificial intelligence (AI), in response to a request from the country’s data protection authority.

First Published: Sep 04 2024 | 8:03 PM IST



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AI tool xFakeSci achieves 94% accuracy in identifying fake research papers

AI tool xFakeSci achieves 94% accuracy in identifying fake research papers

by | Sep 4, 2024 | Technology


The xFakeSci algorithm was trained on the first dataset containing scientific papers and then tested for its performance on the second one. | Representative Picture

3 min read Last Updated : Sep 04 2024 | 7:17 PM IST


Researchers have developed a tool that could tell apart an original research article from one created by AI-chatbots, including ChatGPT.


In a set of 300 fake and real scientific papers, the AI-based tool, named ‘xFakeSci’, detected up to 94 per cent of the fake ones.


This was nearly twice the success rate seen among the more common data-mining techniques, the authors from the State University of New York, US, and Hefei University of Technology, China, said.


“… we introduce xFakeSci, a novel learning algorithm, that is capable of distinguishing ChatGPT-generated articles from publications produced by scientists,” they wrote in the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.


For developing the AI-based algorithm, the researchers developed two distinct datasets. One of them contained almost 4,000 scientific articles taken from PubMed, an open database housing biomedical and life sciences research papers and maintained by the US National Institutes of Health.


The other consisted of 300 fake articles, which the researchers created using ChatGPT.


“I tried to use exact same keywords that I used to extract the literature from the PubMed database, so we would have a common basis of comparison. My intuition was that there must be a pattern exhibited in the fake world versus the actual world, but I had no idea what this pattern was,” the study’s co-author Ahmed Abdeen Hamed, a visiting research fellow at the State University of New York, said.


Of the 300 fake articles, 100 each were related to the medical conditions Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and depression. Each of the 100 included 50 chatbot-created articles and 50 authentic abstracts taken from PubMed.


The xFakeSci algorithm was trained on the first dataset containing scientific papers and then tested for its performance on the second one.


“The xFakeSci algorithm achieved (accuracy) scores ranging from 80 to 94 per cent, outperforming common data mining algorithms, which scored (accuracy) values between 38 and 52 per cent,” the authors wrote.


xFakeSci was programmed to analyse two major features in the fake papers, according to the authors.


One was the numbers of bigrams, which are two words commonly appearing together such as ‘climate change’, ‘clinical trials’ or ‘biomedical literature’. The second was how those bigrams are linked to other words and concepts in the text, they said.


“The first striking thing was that the number of bigrams were very few in the fake world, but in the real world, the bigrams were much more rich. Also, in the fake world, despite the fact that were very few bigrams, they were so connected to everything else,” Hamed said.


The authors proposed that the writing style adopted by an AI is different from that of a human researcher because the two do not have the same goals while producing a piece on a given topic.


“Because ChatGPT is still limited in its knowledge, it tries to convince you by using the most significant words,” Hamed said.


“It is not the job of a scientist to make a convincing argument to you. A real research paper reports honestly about what happened during an experiment and the method used. ChatGPT is about depth on a single point, while real science is about breadth,” Hamed said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Sep 04 2024 | 7:17 PM IST



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GoPro launches HERO13 Black, entry-level HERO cameras in India: Details

GoPro launches HERO13 Black, entry-level HERO cameras in India: Details

by | Sep 4, 2024 | Technology


GoPro HERO and GoPro HERO 13 Black

4 min read Last Updated : Sep 04 2024 | 6:31 PM IST

GoPro has launched two new cameras in India — the top-of-the-line GoPro HERO13 Black and an entry-level GoPro HERO. While the GoPro HERO13 Black features Magnetic Latch Mounting, GPS function and swappable HB-series lens options, the GoPro HERO is the company’s smallest camera with a screen.


GoPro HERO13 Black: Price and availability


GoPro HERO13 Black: Rs 44,990


GoPro HERO13 BlackAccessory Bundle: Rs 49,990


GoPro HERO13 Black Creator Edition: Rs 64,990


The GoPro HERO13 Black Accessory Bundle includes the camera alongside the Handler (Floating Hand Grip), an extra Enduro battery, an extra Curved Adhesive Mount, a 64GB SD card and a carrying case. Meanwhile the Creator Edition packs Volta Power Grip, Media Mod and Light Mod alongside the camera.


The GoPro HERO13 Black along with the Creator Edition and Accessory Bundle are now available for pre-order on e-commerce platform Amazon and Flipkart, as well as select retailers including Reliance Digital and Croma. Open Sale begins September 10, 6:30 PM onwards.


HB-series lenses for the HERO13 Black camera will be sold separately. Ultra Wide Lens Mod, Macro Lens Mod and the ND Filter 4-Pack will be available starting September 10. Anamorphic Lens Mod will be available next year.


GoPro HERO: Price and availability


GoPro’s new entry-level HERO camera is priced at Rs 23,990 and will be available for pre-ordering starting September 16 on e-commerce platform Amazon and Flipkart, as well as select retailers including Reliance Digital and Croma. Sale starts September 22.


GoPro HERO13 Black: Details


GoPro said that the new HERO13 Black Camera can record 5.3K resolution videos at 60 frames per second withHyperSmooth stabilisation. The camera is also capable of 13x Burst Slo-Mo recording, capturing up to 400 frames per second at 720p, 120 fps at 5.3K and 360 fps at 900p.


The HERO13 Black camera features 10 per cent larger batteries, WiFi 6 support and GPS tracking capabilities. The camera also gets Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) HDR Video capability and customisable audio tuning options.


Users can further improve the experience by adding swappable HB-series lenses such as:


  • Ultra Wide Lens Mod: 177 degree field of view, 1:1 aspect ratio, 360 degree Horizon Lock, 4K recording at 60fps. Priced at Rs 9,990.


  • Macro Lens Mod: 4x closer than the standard GoPro lens, variable focus ring for manual adjustment. Priced at Rs 12,990


  • ND Filter 4-Pack: Neutral density filters in ND4 / ND8 / ND16 / ND32, automatic detection, into Auto Cinematic video mode. Priced at Rs 6,990.


  • Anamorphic Lens Mod: with less distortion than traditional wide-angle, 21:9 aspect ratio, Cinematic lens flares, in-camera “de-squeezing.” To be launched in 2025.


GoPro is also offering Contacto Magnetic Door and Power Cable Kit at Rs 7,990. This power extension accessory magnetically attaches to the HERO13 Black camera allowing weather-proof external power source connection. There are also new Magnetic Latch and Ball Joint Mounts priced at Rs 2,500 and Rs 4,000, respectively, that are compatible with all existing GoPro mounts and use a quick dual-latch system to secure the camera.


GoPro HERO: Details


GoPro said that the new HERO camera is its smallest and lightest 4K camera weighing 86g and with 35 per cent less volume than the HERO13 Black. The company said that the camera has a rugged construction and is waterproof up to 5 metres. GoPro also said that the camera features an easy-to-use interface with a LCD touch screen and one-button control for switching between multiple modes.


The camera can capture Ultra HD 4K and HD 1080p video and 12MP photos. It gets 2x Slo-Mo for recording in 2.7k resolution at 60 FPS. With the companion Quik app, users can frame grab 8MP pictures from 4K recordings, add HyperSmooth video stabilisation and more. The company said that the camera can record for up to 100 minutes at the highest video setting on a single charge.

First Published: Sep 04 2024 | 6:31 PM IST



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