Education on technology

Researchers at AI4Bharat , a start-up backed by Microsoft , are raising $12 million (nearly Rs. 100 crore) from venture capital firms Peak XV and Lightspeed Venture, according to three people familiar with the matter. The larger-than-usual seed funding round underscores the growing interest in generative AI , after OpenAI 's ChatGPT dazzled users with its ability to engage in human-like conversations. Most seed rounds are usually up to $1 million (nearly Rs. 8,300 crore) to $2 million (nearly Rs. 16,500 crore). AI4Bharat, which is also backed by the Indian government, has been developing AI models for speech recognition and translation. It unveiled in May a mobile assistant that aims to make information on government schemes accessible in multiple languages. AI4Bharat, Peak XV and Lightspeed did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. Incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras and supported by a grant from Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekan...

Is it permissible in law for a statute to have unbound and limitless discretionary authority, the Bombay High Court asked on Friday while hearing a bunch of petitions against the recently amended Information Technology (IT) Rules against fake news. A division bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Neela Gokhale said before it goes into the effect the Rules would have on the fundamental rights of citizens, it needs to know the boundaries and limits of the words - fake, false, and misleading - used in the Rules. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions challenging the IT Rules that empower the Centre to identify fake, false, and misleading information posted on social media against the government and its business. Stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra, the Editors Guild of India, and the Association of Indian Magazines filed petitions in the high court against the rules terming them as arbitrary, and unconstitutional and saying that they would have a "chilling effect" on the fundamen...

Samsung Galaxy M34 5G has been launched in India today (July 7). The latest Galaxy M-series smartphone is powered by the Exynos 1280 SoC, coupled with 8GB of RAM and up to 128GB of onboard storage. It comes as a successor to last year's Galaxy M33 and runs on Android 13-based One UI 5. The Galaxy M34 5G gets a 6.5-inch AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and is equipped with a 50-megapixel triple rear camera setup. The new smartphone houses a 6,000mAh battery that is claimed to deliver up to two days of battery life on a single charge.  Samsung Galaxy M34 5G price in India, availability Price of the Samsung Galaxy M34 5G in India is set at Rs. 16,999 for the base 6GB RAM + 128GB storage variant and the top-of-the-line 8GB RAM + 128GB storage model costs Rs. 18,999. These are introductory prices with bank offers. Samsung has not specified the duration of this special launch offer. The handset comes in Midnight Blue, Prism Silver, and Waterfall Blue colour options. The new S...

State-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) on Thursday announced the launch of a virtual branch, PNB Metaverse. It is a virtual branch of the bank, which will deliver a unique experience of banking to existing and new customers, who can now explore the bank's products and services such as bank deposits, retail/MSME loans, digital products, women/senior citizens, 'Do It Yourself' and government flagship schemes, PNB said in a statement. PNB has developed the Bank's Metaverse Branch, where its customers will get exclusive access to its virtual environment from the comfort of their home or office through their mobile phones and laptops, it said.  In addition, the bank will offer an immersive 3D experience to the customers while performing traditional banking activities through their digital avatars, it said. In this new phase of the internet, which evolves from a disparate collection of sites and apps into a persistent 3D environment, where moving from work to a social pl...

Alphabet's Google has delayed the release of a fully custom chip for its Pixel smartphones until 2025, The Information reported on Thursday, citing two people familiar with the matter. Google originally planned to release the chip, internally called Redondo, next year to replace the semicustom chips it currently designs with Samsung Electronics, the report said. The tech giant will also switch from Samsung to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) for making the chips, called Tensors, according to The Information. The world's largest contract chipmaker counts companies such as Apple and Nvidia among its customers. Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, while TSMC declined to comment. Google will stick with Samsung for another year and wait until 2025 to introduce a fully custom design chip, internally code-named Laguna, according to The Information. The Laguna chip will be based on TSMC's 3-nanometer manufacturing process, current...

Electric car giant Tesla is set to realise fully autonomous vehicles "later this year", CEO Elon Musk said Thursday, in the billionaire's latest forecast for the long-anticipated milestone. "In terms of where Tesla is at this stage, I think we are very close to achieving full self-driving without human supervision," Musk said via video link at the opening ceremony of an artificial intelligence conference in Shanghai. "This is only speculation, but I think we'll achieve full self-driving, maybe what you would call four or five, I think later this year," the billionaire added, referring to two of the most advanced levels of autonomous driving technology. The mercurial entrepreneur and Twitter owner admitted that he had been wrong in previous predictions on this timeline, but added: "I feel like we're closer to it than we ever have been." Musk has missed his own deadlines for a fully autonomous vehicle — and Tesla's driver-assi...

More than 10 million people have signed up to Threads , Meta's rival to Twitter, within the first few hours of its launch, the Facebook parent's CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday. Threads is the biggest challenger yet to Elon Musk -owned Twitter, which has seen a series of potential competitors emerge but not yet replace one of social media's most iconic companies, despite its epic struggles. The app went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries at 23:00 GMT (4:30 am IST) on Wednesday, and will run with no ads for now. "10 million sign ups in seven hours," Zuckerberg wrote on his official Threads account Thursday. Accounts were already active for celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Hugh Jackman, as well as media outlets including The Washington Post and The Economist. Zuckerberg spent the first few hours of the platform's launch replying to new users. "One thing that's up is the number of world champion MMA fighters o...