Education on technology

The digital economy is a powerful opportunity with digital public infrastructure as a key enabler, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Monday adding India has demonstrated that DPIs are a "force multiplier" for the population that wants to progress and develop. Speaking at the Global DPI Summit in Pune, the Minister of State for IT and Electronics said DPI framework is the future of digital governance for India and the world. "Over $400 billion (nearly Rs. 32,991,000 crore) have been transferred from the government to the citizens of India over the last five years without any leakage and without any intimidation, that is the power of DPI and that is the power that India has demonstrated," Chandrasekhar said. He added, "The partnership that we are today proposing around the DPI is truly a ‘win-win' for all those nations around the world that in a sense have lagged behind in digitalisation ." The Minister termed the digital economy as a power...

The government on Monday responded to reports of an alleged data breach of the CoWIN database, stating that the data appeared to have been sourced from a different database containing information stolen in the past. The response follows reports that an automated bot on Telegram was surfacing personal details of people who had registered with the CoWIN platform to receive COVID vaccinations during the pandemic. The government has also claimed that it did not appear that the CoWIN app or database had been directly breached. Hours after reports of the alleged data breach, Minister of State for Electronics and Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar stated on Twitter that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team ( CERT-In ) had responded and reviewed the reports of breaches that surfaced on social media on Monday. The minister stated a Telegram bot was sharing CoWIN app details when a phone number was entered. The bot was reportedly taken down shortly after it was discovered a...

The crypto climate in the US is heating up after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) levied charges of legal violations against Coinbase and Binance this week. In the backdrop of the ongoing chaos, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has decided to go international with its presence. The crypto and Web3-focussed company will be establishing itself in the UK now, citing that the crypto climate in the country is predictable in terms of operating a business associated to the digital assets sector. Later this year, the 14-year-old company will be setting up an office in London, UK. The decision was finalised after company leaders had conversations with the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as well as UK's HM Treasury. The development has been confirmed by Chris Dixon, a a16z managing partner. This marks the VC firm's first step outside of the US. “The UK policymakers and regulators are taking an approach that is uniquely tailored to blockchain and digital ...

The personal data of COVID-19 vaccine recipients in India was reportedly leaked online via a bot on a popular chat platform, allowing free access to users without the OTP required for the details stored on the CoWIN platform. According to details that surfaced on Twitter on Monday, the leaked data also includes the personal information on several politicians and journalists. The bot that served the information appears to have been blocked, and government officials are reportedly looking into reports of the leaked information. A report by Malayala Manorama on Monday states that the personal details uploaded by users to the CoWIN portal for access to COVID-19 vaccination shots were available on Telegram via an automated bot. Screenshots of the bot in action surfaced online on Twitter earlier on Monday, and the newspaper states it was able in independently verify the claims made on Twitter. The bot appears to have been taken down after the initial reports of the data breach and Gadgets ...

The CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI on Monday said a tour of capital cities had left him "quite optimistic" about prospects for global coordination on artificial intelligence (AI). The public face of the startup, backed by Microsoft, has been on a whirlwind tour looking to capitalise on interest in generative AI and exert influence on regulation of the burgeoning technology. "I came to the trip ... sceptical that it was going to be possible in the short term to get global cooperation to reduce existential risk but I am now wrapping up the trip feeling quite optimistic we can get it done," Sam Altman told students in Tokyo. Regulators are scrambling to adapt existing rules and create new guidelines to govern the use of generative AI, which can create text and images and is engendering excitement and fear about its potential to reshape a wide range of industries. The European Union is moving ahead with its draft AI Act, which is expected to become law this year, w...

The voice on the phone seemed frighteningly real -- an American mother heard her daughter sobbing before a man took over and demanded a ransom. But the girl was an AI clone and the abduction was fake. The biggest peril of Artificial Intelligence, experts say, is its ability to demolish the boundaries between reality and fiction, handing cybercriminals a cheap and effective technology to propagate disinformation. In a new breed of scams that has rattled US authorities, fraudsters are using strikingly convincing AI voice cloning tools -- widely available online -- to steal from people by impersonating family members. "Help me, mom, please help me," Jennifer DeStefano, an Arizona-based mother, heard a voice saying on the other end of the line. DeStefano was "100 percent" convinced it was her 15-year-old daughter in deep distress while away on a skiing trip. "It was never a question of who is this? It was completely her voice... it was the way she would have ...