This tool should be powered by Google’s Imagen family of models, the report mentioned…reports Asian Lite News
Google is reportedly planning to add its own image generator directly to its AI chatbot Bard. As shared by developer Dylan Roussel on X, an unpublished Google Bard changelog — dated for January 18 — showed how you can “Create images with Bard”, reports 9to5Google.
“Here’s what’s coming next in Bard. . . tomorrow. Image generation with Bard will use Imagen, Google’s Text-to-Image “diffusion technology,” Roussel wrote.
However, the developer also noted that the “content of this changelog may still be changed until officially released”.
Similar to other tools, it will allow users to create images by simply describing their imagination in words to the chatbot.
This tool should be powered by Google’s Imagen family of models, the report mentioned.
Meanwhile, Google has added a new feature in Maps that will let users navigate in tunnels or other satellite dead zones. The company added support for ‘Bluetooth beacons’ and has rolled out widely on Google Maps for Android, however, it still missing in the iOS version of the app.
Bluetooth beacons are not new as the Google-owned Waze has long supported the technology in tunnels globally, including major cities like New York City, Chicago, Paris, Brussels, and many more.
Those beacons, though, have only ever functioned within the Waze app.
In line with these goals, there is a need to establish new institutional frameworks and public-private partnerships along with implementing multilateral controls to aid and enhance these efforts…reports Asian Lite News
The AI Governance Alliance (AIGA) released on Thursday a series of three new reports on advanced artificial intelligence (AI). The papers focus on generative AI governance, unlocking its value and a framework for responsible AI development and deployment.
The alliance brings together governments, businesses and experts to shape responsible AI development applications and governance, and to ensure equitable distribution and enhanced access to this path-departing technology worldwide.
“The AI Governance Alliance is uniquely positioned to play a crucial role in furthering greater access to AI-related resources, thereby contributing to a more equitable and responsible AI ecosystem globally,” said Cathy Li, Head, AI, Data and Metaverse, World Economic Forum.
“We must collaborate among governments, the private sector and local communities to ensure the future of AI benefits all.”
The AIGA is calling upon experts from various sectors to address several key areas. This includes improving data quality and availability across nations, boosting access to computational resources, and adapting foundation models to suit local needs and challenges. There is also a strong emphasis on education and the development of local expertise to create and navigate local AI ecosystems effectively.
In line with these goals, there is a need to establish new institutional frameworks and public-private partnerships along with implementing multilateral controls to aid and enhance these efforts.
While AI holds the potential to address global challenges, it also poses risks of widening existing digital divides or creating new ones. These and other topics are explored in a new briefing paper series, released on Thursday and crafted by AIGA’s three core workstreams, in collaboration with IBM Consulting and Accenture.
As AI technology evolves at a rapid pace and developed nations race to capitalize on AI innovation, the urgency to address the digital divide is critical to ensure that billions of people in developing countries are not left behind.
On international cooperation and inclusive access in AI development and deployment, Generative AI Governance: Shaping Our Collective Global Future — from the Resilient Governance and Regulation track — evaluates national approaches, addresses key debates on generative AI, and advocates for international coordination and standards to prevent fragmentation.
The AIGA also seeks to mobilize resources for exploring AI benefits in key sectors, including healthcare and education.
“As we witness the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence globally, the UAE stands committed to fostering an inclusive AI environment, both within our nation and throughout the world,” Omar Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications of the United Arab Emirates, said.
“Our collaboration with the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance is instrumental in making AI benefits universally accessible, ensuring no community is left behind. We are dedicated to developing a comprehensive and forward-thinking AI and digital economy roadmap, not just for the UAE but for the global good.”
Objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) is a practical assessment commonly used in the real world to examine clinicians’ skills and competencies in a standardised and objective way…reports Asian Lite News
Tech giant Google has developed a novel chatbot which can converse with patients and make diagnostic reasoning at par with human doctors.
The Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer (AMIE), a conversational diagnostic research AI system, is based on a large language model (LLM) developed by Google, and can deliver results across a multitude of disease conditions, specialties and scenarios.
“We trained and evaluated AMIE along many dimensions that reflect quality in real-world clinical consultations from the perspective of both clinicians and patients,” Alan Karthikesalingam and Vivek Natarajan, Research Leads, Google Research, wrote in a blog post.
“The physician-patient conversation is a cornerstone of medicine, in which skilled and intentional communication drives diagnosis, management, empathy and trust. AI systems capable of such diagnostic dialogues could increase availability, accessibility, quality and consistency of care by being useful conversational partners to clinicians and patients alike. But approximating clinicians’ considerable expertise is a significant challenge,” they added.
The AMIE has been trained on real-world datasets comprising medical reasoning, medical summarisation, and real-world clinical conversations.
To train the chatbot, the team developed a novel self-play based simulated diagnostic dialogue environment with automated feedback mechanisms in a virtual care setting. They also employed an inference time chain-of-reasoning strategy to improve AMIE’s diagnostic accuracy and conversation quality.
AMIE’s performance was tested in consultations with simulated patients (played by trained actors), compared to those performed by 20 real board-certified primary care physicians (PCPs).
“AMIE and PCPs were assessed from the perspectives of both specialist attending physicians and our simulated patients in a randomised, blinded crossover study that included 149 case scenarios from OSCE providers in Canada, the UK, and India in a diverse range of specialties and diseases,” the researchers said.
Objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) is a practical assessment commonly used in the real world to examine clinicians’ skills and competencies in a standardised and objective way.
AMIE performed simulated diagnostic conversations at least as well as PCPs when both were evaluated along multiple clinically-meaningful pointers of consultation quality. This included history-taking, diagnostic accuracy, clinical management, clinical communication skills, relationship fostering and empathy.
AMIE had greater diagnostic accuracy and superior performance for 28 of 32 pointers from the perspective of specialist physicians, and 24 of 26 from the perspective of patient actors.
“Our research has several limitations and should be interpreted with appropriate caution. Clinicians were limited to unfamiliar synchronous text-chat which permits large-scale LLM-patient interactions but is not representative of usual clinical practice. While further research is required before AMIE could be translated to real-world settings, the results represent a milestone towards conversational diagnostic AI,” the researchers wrote in the paper, published on the arXiv preprint server.
Amazon-owned live game streaming platform Twitch is reportedly laying off 35 per cent of its workforce, or about 500 employees, this week….reports Asian Lite News
Amazon is reportedly laying off several hundreds of employees in its Prime Video and MGM Studios.
Mike Hopkins, Senior Vice President of the division, announced the cuts in an email on Wednesday, saying that the reason for the reduction is to “reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact”, reports TechCrunch.
The company has also started to notify the affected workers in the US and will inform most other regions by the end of this week.
Affected employees are provided with packages that include separation payments, transitional benefits, and external career transition support, the report mentioned.
“Our prioritisation of initiatives that we know will move the needle, along with our continued investments in programming, marketing and product, positions our business for an even stronger future,” Hopkins said.
Meanwhile, Amazon-owned live game streaming platform Twitch is reportedly laying off 35 per cent of its workforce, or about 500 employees, this week. Twitch laid off dozens of employees last year, and has shut down its service in South Korea due to “prohibitively expensive” costs.
According to a Bloomberg report, the fresh job cuts, “which could be announced as soon as Wednesday”, come amid concerns over losses at Twitch.
Meta Joins Layoff Club
Meta has started the New Year with laying off some technical programme managers (TPMs) at Instagram and reports said that at least 60 such jobs are either being consolidated or eliminated.
According to a post on Blind, an anonymous forum and community for verified tech employees, the company has given these employees time until the end of March to re-interview for product management roles or other jobs.
A verified Meta professional noted in the thread that job cuts “will soon (be) expanded to other orgs for TPMs”.
It means other technical programme managers at Meta may also find their roles consolidated or reorganised away.
“Meta layoffs: all TPMs in Instagram laid off today. Confirmed by my spouse who works there. She is not in the Instagram org and not affected. Product managers are not affected,” read another Blind post.
According to Business Insider, at least 60 such employees have lost their jobs.
TPMs are somewhere positioned between technical workers like engineers and product managers (PMs).
A former Instagram employee posted to LinkedIn about “expected changes to TPM roles,” saying that people are expected to “re-interview for PM roles” or product manager roles.
Meta did not immediately comment on these layoffs.
After planned mass layoffs last year, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has not denied “that more jobs would be eliminated in the future”.
According to the report, he was still aiming to reduce the company’s overall headcount to that of 2020 before it went on the mass hiring spree.
In March last year, Zuckerberg announced the company would cut 10,000 jobs in the coming months, along with newly reorganised teams and management hierarchies.
The fresh cuts came just four months after Meta laid off 11,000 employees, or 13 per cent of the company’s workforce, in November 2022.
Google Axes AR Staff
Google is laying off hundreds of hardware employees, especially in the augmented reality (AR) division while Fitbit co-founders James Park, Eric Friedman and other Fitbit leaders are reportedly leaving the company.
Google had acquired wearable company Fitbit for $2.1 billion in 2019.
“A few hundred roles are being eliminated in DSPA (Devices and Services) with the majority of impacts on the 1P AR Hardware team,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
The Devices & Services teams are responsible for Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit devices. “While we are making changes to our 1P AR hardware team, Google continues to be deeply committed to other AR initiatives, such as AR experiences in our products, and product partnerships,” the spokesperson told 9to5Google.
The company said that it remains committed to “serving our Fitbit users well, innovating in the health space with personal AI, and building on the momentum with Pixel Watch, the redesigned Fitbit app, Fitbit Premium service, and the Fitbit tracker line”.
“This work will continue to be a key part of our new org model,” said the tech giant.
Google is switching to a functional organisation model where there will be one team responsible for hardware engineering across Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit hardware. There will be a single leader for such products across all Google hardware, according to reports.
Google has shifted its work on AR to the Android and hardware teams.
The Google VP also discussed the investment plans of the company and told the Chief Minister that artificial intelligence was set to bring major transformation in various sectors…reports Asian Lite News
Google Vice President Chandrasekhar Thota called on Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy on Thursday and said that the technology major has evinced interest in working together with the State Government.
Thota paid a courtesy call on the Chief Minister on Thursday at the CM’s residence.
Thota further said that Google was excited to partner with the state in developing a digitization agenda for Telangana in farming, education and health.
The IT major had deep technology and expertise for bringing quality service to serve the needs of the people of the State.
The Google VP also discussed the investment plans of the company and told the Chief Minister that artificial intelligence was set to bring major transformation in various sectors.
As per the official statement, the Telangana CM discussed road safety improvements using Google Maps and Google Earth platforms.
IT and Industries Minister D Sridhar Babu and Roads and Buildings Minister Komatireddy Venkat Reddy were also present at the meeting.
Earlier on January 10, Telangana CM Revanth Reddy hosted representatives of 13 countries for dinner in Hyderabad last night. The dinner saw attendance of representatives of United States of America, Iran, Turkey, UAE, UK, Japan, Thailand, Germany, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Australia, France and Finland.
The Telangana Chief Minister appealed to the respective countries to explore investment opportunities in our State. he assured that the government will collaborate and maintain cordial relationship with everyone.
Chief Minister Revanth Reddy also met representatives of Amazon briefed the Chief Minister about their company’s investments in Telangana. Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti and other ministers as well as Chief Secretary Industries Department Jayesh Ranjan and other officials participated in this meeting.
On January 7 the Revanth Reddy government completed one month in power. Speaking on the occasion the Chief Minister said “The month-long journey that took place while maintaining the word that the servants are not the rulers… bringing the governance closer to the people… and assuring that I am there gave me a new experience. Listening to the voices of the poor… paving the way for the future of the youth… seeing the happiness on the faces of our girls… reassuring the farmers… the month-long walk is taking steps towards a bright future. This month-long administration has been responsible for the commitment to investments… laying a big emphasis on industrial growth… carving engravings for the development of cities… I will continue to fulfill my responsibility.” (ANI)
Based on Google Trends data, the study concludes that inflation anxiety has been easing over 2023, but remains higher than during 2018-2021….reports Asian Lite News
Google search interest regarding the prices of just three vegetables — tomatoes, onions, and potatoes (TOP) — has turned out to be a useful indicator of price anxiety in India, according to an ICRA study released on Tuesday.
The study, titled ‘Quickonomics’, uses Google Trends data on TOP price searches as a proxy for price anxiety and observes how they are increasingly useful in gauging inflationary expectations — a key factor in monetary policy making.
Especially, since these food prices have kept the headline inflation under pressure in India and are also instrumental in keeping inflation volatility high, the report states.
Based on Google Trends data, the study concludes that inflation anxiety has been easing over 2023, but remains higher than during 2018-2021.
Within TOP, onions and tomatoes show a super spike in Google search interest every few years. Search interest in potato prices is comparatively range-bound and devoid of super spikes, as per the trends data for the past five years
According to the study, fewer losses from potatoes, because of better storage, have kept prices and search anxiety on their prices range-bound. Tomatoes and onions lack adequate storage and face higher losses in comparison
“We find that the Google Trends index based on searches for ‘inflation’ is strongly correlated with inflation expectations of households based on the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) survey, and hence, a good proxy for inflation anxiety in the economy,” the study states.
Inflationary pressures in the Indian economy may be tracked in three ways.
First, is by looking at the actual data. CPI inflation is released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) and the daily retail price data is released by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs.
Second, is the data on inflation expectations of households based on surveys, conducted by the RBI.
The study finds Google Trends as a third interesting source. “We take this as a proxy for inflation anxiety, based on Google web search requests by consumers for prices of commodities key to their consumption and those they believe are witnessing an upturn in prices,” the ICRA report states.
November CPI inflation made headlines again, as it rose to 5.6 per cent from 4.9 per cent in October. Food inflation jumped to 8.7 per cent from 6.6 per cent, with vegetables inflation soaring 17.7 per cent, followed by pulses. This is the second price shock in vegetables in the current fiscal.
Uncertainty on food prices is, thus, likely to haunt the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) again. While there is little that the MPC can do to control food inflation, persistent food inflation can become generalised and enter headline inflation, requiring a monetary policy response. Hence, there is a need to closely watch food prices, the ICRA report says.
“We find that the Google Trends index based on searches for ‘inflation’ is strongly correlated with inflation expectations of households based on the RBI’s survey, and hence, a good proxy for inflation anxiety in the economy,” the ICRA report concluded.
AutoRT harnesses the potential of large foundation models which is critical to creating robots that can understand practical human goals…reports Asian Lite News
The Google DeepMind robotics team has introduced new AI-based systems based on large language models (LLMs) to help develop better multi-tasking robots for our daily use.
The tech giant unveiled AutoRT, SARA-RT and RT-Trajectory systems to improve real-world robot data collection, speed, and generalisation.
“We’re announcing a suite of advances in robotics research that bring us a step closer to this future. AutoRT, SARA-RT, and RT-Trajectory build on our historic Robotics Transformers work to help robots make decisions faster, and better understand and navigate their environments,” the Google DeepMind team said in a statement.
AutoRT harnesses the potential of large foundation models which is critical to creating robots that can understand practical human goals.
By collecting more experiential training data AutoRT can help scale robotic learning to better train robots for the real world, said the team, said Google.
AutoRT combines large foundation models such as a LLM or a Visual Language Model (VLM), and a robot control model (RT-1 or RT-2) to create a system that can deploy robots to gather training data in novel environments.
“In extensive real-world evaluations over seven months, the system safely orchestrated as many as 20 robots simultaneously, and up to 52 unique robots in total, in a variety of office buildings, gathering a diverse dataset comprising 77,000 robotic trials across 6,650 unique tasks,” the team informed.
The Self-Adaptive Robust Attention for Robotics Transformers (SARA-RT) system converts Robotics Transformer (RT) models into more efficient versions.
“The best SARA-RT-2 models were 10.6 per cent more accurate and 14 per cent faster than RT-2 models after being provided with a short history of images. We believe this is the first scalable attention mechanism to provide computational improvements with no quality loss,” said the DeepMind team.
When the team applied SARA-RT to a state-of-the-art RT-2 model with billions of parameters, it resulted in faster decision-making and better performance on a wide range of robotic tasks.
Another model called RT-Trajectory hich automatically adds visual outlines that describe robot motions in training videos.
RT-Trajectory takes each video in a training dataset and overlays it with a 2D trajectory sketch of the robot arm’s gripper as it performs the task.
“These trajectories, in the form of RGB images, provide low-level, practical visual hints to the model as it learns its robot-control policies,” said Google.
When tested on 41 tasks unseen in the training data, an arm controlled by RT-Trajectory more than doubled the performance of existing state-of-the-art RT models: it achieved a task success rate of 63 per cent compared with 29 per cent for RT-2.
“RT-Trajectory can also create trajectories by watching human demonstrations of desired tasks, and even accept hand-drawn sketches. And it can be readily adapted to different robot platforms,” according to the team.
The bill would focus on four areas — app stores and payments, search, browsers, and operating systems, the report mentioned…reports Asian Lite News
Japan is reportedly working on a regulation that would require Google and Apple app stores to allow third-party platforms and their billing systems.
The new regulation would ask Apple and Google to allow outside app stores and payments on their mobile operating systems, reports Nikkei Asia.
The move is aimed at curbing their monopolies in the Japanese market. According to the report, the legislation, slated to be sent to the parliament in 2024, would restrict moves by platform operators to keep users in the operators’ own ecosystems and shut out rivals.
The bill would focus on four areas — app stores and payments, search, browsers, and operating systems, the report mentioned.
The bill would empower the Japanese Fair Trade Commission to fine violators and likely only impact foreign companies, according to Nikkei Asia.
“If this is modelled on existing antitrust law, the penalties would generally amount to around 6 per cent of revenue earned from the problematic activities,” said the report.
Currently, in-app payments must go through Apple’s system, which takes a commission of up to 30 per cent. Although Google allows third-party app distribution platforms, it still requires apps to use its billing system.
Now, Google and the plaintiffs have agreed to terms that will result in the litigation being dismissed…reports Asian Lite News
Google has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit in the US over its Chrome browser’s incognito mode.
The lawsuit was filed in 2020, alleging that the tech giant “track, collect, and identify browsing data in real time” even when the users open incognito mode.
Now, Google and the plaintiffs have agreed to terms that will result in the litigation being dismissed, reports Ars Technica.
The February 5th trial date is now off and the parties present a formal agreement for court approval within the next 60 days.
“Through mediation facilitated by the Layn R. Phillips, Plaintiffs and Google have agreed to a binding term sheet that would resolve the claims in this litigation, pending the Court’s approval,” the judgement read.
The lawsuit was filed by Florida resident William Byatt and California residents Chasom Brown and Maria Nguyen.
The lawsuit also alleged that websites using Google Analytics or Ad Manager collected information from browsers in Incognito mode, “including web page content, device data, and IP address”.
The plaintiffs also accused Google of taking Chrome users’ private browsing activity and then associating it with their already-existing user profiles.
In August, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers in a California court denied Google’s push for summary judgment in the lawsuit, which claimed the tech giant is tracking and collecting data even when people use the private ‘Incognito’ mode on its Chrome browser.
Google Chrome’s ‘Incognito’ mode gives users the choice to browse the internet without their activities being saved to either browser or devices.
However, the judge pointed to statements in the Chrome privacy notice, Privacy Policy, Incognito Splash Screen, and Search & Browse Privately Help page about how incognito mode limits the information stored or how people can control the information they share.
In September, a class action lawsuit was filed against Google by US states and consumers. The lawsuit alleged that Google has a monopoly over app distribution on Android through its Play Store…reports Asian Lite News
Google has agreed to pay $700 million to the US consumers and states in a settlement over Play Store reached in September.
The company will pay $630 million to consumers and $70 to a fund used by states.
“Google will pay $630 million into a settlement fund to be distributed for the benefit of consumers according to a Court-approved plan and $70 million into a fund that will be used by the states,” the tech giant said in a blogpost on Monday.
In September, a class action lawsuit was filed against Google by US states and consumers. The lawsuit alleged that Google has a monopoly over app distribution on Android through its Play Store.
“This settlement builds on Android’s choice and flexibility, maintains strong security protections, and retains Google’s ability to compete with other OS makers, and invest in the Android ecosystem for users and developers. We’re pleased to resolve our case with the states and move forward on a settlement,” Google said.
This comes after Fortnite maker Epic Games won its antitrust battle with Google in a landmark case that went on for three years.
The unanimous verdict by a US jury wraps up the legal battle between the tech companies. The jury found that Google turned its Play Store and Google Play Billing service into an illegal monopoly, reports The Verge.
Epic filed its lawsuit against Google in 2020, alleging that Google Play Store practices violated US antitrust laws.
