Comment by Riaz Haq on July 10, 2023 at 4:16pm

Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez in #Pakistan? #AI-generated pics of pop singers are viral. #Pakistani artist Saboor Akram also gave a traditional makeover to Harry Styles and envisioned him posing in a floral-print kurta set. Ed Sheeran, also dressed in a kurta, was imagined clicking a selfie with people in Rawalpindi.
https://www.indiatoday.in/lifestyle/celebrity/story/taylor-swift-se...

While Taylor Swift is busy regaling her fans with back-to-back concerts in the US, an artist imagined her flaunting a desi outfit while posing for a picture in Pakistan using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Not just Swift, the artist also generated photos of several other international singers such as Selena Gomez, Harry Styles, Rihanna and Ed Sheeran, posing on the streets of Pakistan. Taylor, in the viral AI-generated pictures, rocked a heavily-embroidered red kurta set with a mustard dupatta. Selena, on the other hand, flaunted a floral-print ensemble.


Saboor Akram, an artist from Pakistan, also gave a traditional makeover to Harry Styles and envisioned him posing in a floral-print kurta set. Ed Sheeran, also dressed in a kurta, was imagined clicking a selfie with people in Rawalpindi.

That’s not all! The artist also gave a traditional makeover to American television personalities Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner. The sisters were seen dressed in simplistic kurta sets.

The internet appeared to be rather amused by the pictures. “Never knew I needed Harry Styles in a kurta until now God Damn,” an Instagram user commented. “Want Selena’s fit,” read another comment.

“This is so cool! Desi Taylor Swift,” another Instagram user wrote.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 22, 2023 at 7:18pm

Report reveals widening European interest and shift towards STEM

https://thepienews.com/news/interest-european-studies-shift-stem/

https://studyportals.typeform.com/to/PkDRfZl8/

Students from Pakistan and Bangladesh are driving interest in education across continental Europe – a region that is maintaining a “strong appeal” for international students – but government policy, among other factors, may be impacting students’ choices, according to new research.

“Although India generates the largest share of relative demand [at bachelor’s level], this fluctuates drastically and has gradually declined overall,” the report noted. “Conversely, you can see that Bangladesh and Pakistan have increased their share of the interest.”

The research tracks a similar trend in master’s, with India showing a “general decline in interest year-on-year”, with Bangladesh and Pakistan, alongside students in Turkey and Iran, showing “strong demand to study master’s programs”.


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Additionally, program preference is shifting towards artificial intelligence, data science & big data, business intelligence & analytics, entrepreneurship and engineering management.

Analysing data collected in the year up to May 2023, the Studyportals Destination Europe report delves into trends in master’s and bachelor’s programs, as well as taking a closer look at the business and management discipline – which the paper noted as most popular for international students in general.

One in five students looking to study in Europe are interested in the discipline, the company noted.

While Germany “holds significant global market share of student interest”, the analysis found a “drop in relative demand” for its programs, while Norway had seen the “largest decline” in relative demand. The drop is likely influenced by the introduction of tuition fees, the paper said.

At the other end of the spectrum, Italy is continuing to grow in its popularity among international students, at both the bachelor’s and master’s levels.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 25, 2023 at 8:18am

No homegrown Indian contenders have emerged to challenge the dominance of large language model titans such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Ventures–backed Anthropic, or Google’s Bard.


https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/03/where-is-india-in-the-generative-...


“While there are over 1500 AI-based startups in India with over $4 billion of funding, India is still losing the AI innovation battle,” say analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein.


To their credit, many of India’s major startups are using machine learning to enhance aspects of their business operations. For instance, e-commerce giant Flipkart uses machine learning to refine customer shopping experiences, while Razorpay utilizes AI to combat payment fraud. Unicorn edtech Vedantu recently integrated AI into its live classes, making them more accessible and affordable.

Industry insiders attribute India’s dearth of AI-first startups in part to a skills gap among the nation’s workforce. Now the advent of generative AI could displace many service jobs, analysts warn.

“Among its over 5 million employees, IT in India still has a high mix of low-end employees like BPO or system maintenance. While AI isn’t at the level of causing disruptions, the systems are improving rapidly,” Bernstein analysts said.

Dev Khare, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners India, recently assessed the disruptive potential of AI and warned that jobs and processes in industries such as market research, content production, legal analysis, financial analysis, and various IT services jobs could be impacted.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 25, 2023 at 6:25pm

‘Super, super big’: Pakistan’s indigenously developed AI tool makes a worldwide splash

https://www.arabnews.pk/node/2294696/pakistan


The AI tool helps users create personalized raps, bios and dating profiles based on their Twitter posts

Within three days of its launch, AIAV reached over 200,000 users from 194 countries around the world

The AI tool performs its task by combining ChatGPT, widely regarded as the best generative large language model, with specialized technologies such as Elasticsearch and GoogleNLP. The result offers unparalleled speed, efficiency, and accuracy.


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When Pakistani artificial intelligence engineers Hammad Khan, 29, and Saad Mughal, 27, initially developed and released an AI tool, they meant to test the waters of the world of AI. Little did they know that the locally developed app would end up making a massive splash worldwide.

In layman’s terms, AI is a branch of computer science concerned with building and managing technology that can learn to make decisions and carry out actions on behalf of a human being. AIAV, developed by Khan and Mughal, residents of Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi, helps users create personalized raps, biographies, and dating profiles all based on their social media persona.

Here’s what the tool does for you: Enter your Twitter handle and wait for the AI engine to scan all your tweets. Once it’s done rummaging through hundreds of your tweets and poring over content you posted on Twitter, AIAV produces the user’s brief biography, a personalized rap, and a dating profile.

Such was the tool’s popularity within three days of its launch that AIAV became one of the fastest generative AI products to reach more than 200,000 users from 194 countries earlier this month.

Khan and Mughal, co-founders of the tech consulting firm AlphaVenture that specializes in data and AI, said they developed the tool and launched it in the first week of April.

“I published this and went for an iftar party, and when I came back to my home, I realized that the tool has gone super, super big,” Khan, chief executive officer of AlphaVenture, told Arab News. “Because initially, I intended that maybe 1,000 people might use it or test it, but what we were seeing was astronomical as everything was crashing down.”

Khan is a graduate of the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology, one of Pakistan’s leading private universities.

The AI tool performs its task by combining ChatGPT, widely regarded as the best generative large language model, with specialized technologies such as Elasticsearch and GoogleNLP. The result offers unparalleled speed, efficiency, and accuracy.

Khan said the next 72 hours after the launch were an “interesting experience” as the two founders slept less and had their hands full trying to scale the tool in accordance with its rising demand.

“Every time we would try to scale it, every time we would try to maybe build more things on it, 10,000 or 20,000 people would come in,” he said. “We were literally in awe.”

AIAV has so far reached an impressive 12 million users worldwide and clocked in over 400,000 user signups.

“Primarily, the whole idea of building this tool was to test it and maybe compete with the likes of startups in the Silicon Valley and see how far we can take it, and I think now it’s pretty well tested,” Khan said. “We have tested it with over 400,000 users. Now, I’m pretty happy with the result, but honestly, we didn’t expect this.”

The majority of the tool’s users are from the US, UK, and the Middle East. Many of them believe that its “personal nature” caused the AI program to attract people from all parts of the world.

Mughal said the duo was making modifications to AIAV so that the response generated by the context engine was more accurate. The founders are also in touch with a few venture capital funds for financing.

Buoyed by AIAV’s phenomenal success, Khan and Mughal, who live in Karachi’s middle-class Gulistan-e-Jauhar neighborhood, have their eyes set on broadening the tool’s application.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 25, 2023 at 6:26pm

The ChatGPT API will allow developers to integrate ChatGPT into their own applications, products, or services. ChatGPT is a sibling model to InstructGPT, which is trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response. Learn more about ChatGPT in the blog post. To learn more about the ChatGPT API, please visit our API articles.

Please note that the ChatGPT API is not included in the ChatGPT Plus subscription and are billed separately. The API has its own pricing, which can be found at https://openai.com/pricing. The ChatGPT Plus subscription covers usage on chat.openai.com only and costs $20/month.

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7039783-how-can-i-access-the-ch...

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 26, 2023 at 9:53am

Discover four Pakistani startups at the forefront of AI/ML
by Eunice Cheng | on 06 DEC 2022


https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/startups/discover-four-pakistani-start...


Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Epiphany joined forces in 2021 to co-curate an artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) bootcamp called AI/ML Reactor. AI/ML Reactor is a rigorous 5-week virtual program aimed at driving AI/ML awareness and empowering startups in Pakistan.

We received an overwhelming response for this program. Twenty-five startups were chosen out of 250 startups that applied from all provinces in Pakistan. Participants had access to exclusive master classes, a group tech mentoring session, and one-on-one mentoring sessions with AWS specialists and thought leaders. At the end of the program, they presented their AI/ML solutions to a panel of judges (see Demo Day).

Meet our winners from the 2021 Reactor!
Salesflo – 1st prize
Salesflo is one of Pakistan’s fastest growing software as a service (SaaS) platforms. They build tools to improve in-field sales efficiency for consumer goods.


Ozoned Digital Ltd (“Ozoned”) – 2nd prize
Ozoned is an insurtech startup that aims to digitally transform the insurance value chain. It services multiple stakeholders (insurers, insurance brokers, insurance agents, customers, and others) in the insurance ecosystem.

XpertFlow – joint 3rd prize
XpertFlow is an AI-powered preventative healthcare company founded in 2019. Its mission is to reduce mortality from hospital acquired infections (HAIs) that eventually lead to sepsis.


Trukkr – joint 3rd prize
Trukkr provides financial services and technology for logistics in Pakistan. It gives both large and small businesses a comprehensive technology platform to manage and provide all their logistical needs. Trusted by some of the biggest companies in the country, Trukkr saves organizations time and money, while providing them with deep data and powerful insights.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 1, 2023 at 9:51am

Ethnic Appropriation? ChatGPT Creator Mira Murati is an Albanian American, Not Indian American as Reported by Indian Media - American Kahani


https://americankahani.com/business/ethnic-appropriation-chatgpt-cr...


What’s in a name? A slippery slope, if one were to go by the way some in the Indian media went to town claiming Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, is an Indian American.

She is not. She is an American of Albanian origin. Although there is almost no biographical information available online, most websites identify her as an Albanian, including Albanian websites. One of them claims that the 1987-born technologist was born in Vlora, Albania.

ChatGPT has had a sensational debut last year because of its potential applications. As Cnet.com says, “this artificial intelligence bot can answer questions, write essays and program computers.”

The Indian media reports, however, widely quoted Murati’s recent interview with Time magazine where she expressed her concerns over its misuse, mainly using it as a peg to claim that she is an Indian American. Several leading newspapers published an Indian agency report that misreported Murati’s ethnicity.

One Indian blogger who runs “Biography Reader” even went on to claim that “she was born in a middle-class Hindu family. Her father’s name is Mr. Murati. Her mother’s name is Mrs. Murati.”

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Inside OpenAI, the Architect of ChatGPT | The Circuit

https://youtu.be/p9Q5a1Vn-Hk

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Mustafa Suleyman (Syrian Muslim): the Liberal Activist Ensuring Google DeepMind Benefits All of Humanity



https://www.businessinsider.com/mustafa-suleyman-the-lefty-activist...


Mustafa Suleyman is one of the three cofounders of DeepMind, an artificial intelligence (AI) lab in London that was acquired by Google in 2014 for a reported £400 million — the search giant's largest acquisition in Europe to date.

Listen to a few of Suleyman's talks on YouTube and you'll quickly realise that he's a left-leaning activist who wants to make the world a better place for everyone as opposed to an elite few. He differs from many of today's tech founders in that he genuinely seems to care about the welfare of everyone on the planet.

The 35-year-old — affectionately known as "Moose" internally at DeepMind and among his friends — lives in Peckham, South London, with his artist fiancée. He can often be seen on Twittermaking his thoughts known on issues like homelessness, diversity, and inequality, and also once retweeted Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

DeepMind may be owned by one of the largest companies in the world but Suleyman strongly believes capitalism is failing society in a number of areas. He explained this during a talk at a Google event in 2017.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 1, 2023 at 6:33pm

Evolution of AI’s Significance in Pakistan

https://cscr.pk/explore/themes/politics-governance/pakistans-draft-...

The hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI) has increased over the past decade, but in Pakistan, this began gaining momentum around 2017 onward. It began with a few opinion pieces in institutional publications calling for the securitisation of AI against “hybrid war” to proper governmental initiatives by two different political governments. Near the very end of its tenure in mid-2018, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) government led then by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, inaugurated a National Centre for Artificial Intelligence (NCAI) at the National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST), followed by a Rs 1.1bn budgetary allocation for select universities (mostly in Punjab and Islamabad, one in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Sindh each); most importantly, NUST was declared as the headquarters from where these research and development (R&D) efforts on AI would be coordinated.

A month later (May 2018), the succeeding federal government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by then Prime Minister Imran Khan, approved the Digital Pakistan Policy. This was the first high-level government policy to lay out a plan to set up innovation centres in different thematic areas across the provincial capitals and minor/auxiliary cities, which included AI as a special focus area. The year concluded with the President of Pakistan Dr Arif Alvi, himself a former PTI leader, ambitiously declaring his own Presidential Initiative for Artificial Intelligence & Computing (PIAIC).

On the practical side, it is a rudderless policy driven more by utopian ideals instead of factual appreciation of strengths and weaknesses.

Two years later (during the PTI government) in 2020, Pakistan Air Force (PAF) took the lead in setting up a Centre of Artificial Intelligence and Computing (CENTAIC). The next year (2021), PAF also inaugurated a Cyber Security Academy within Air University, during which the Air Force’s C4I lead also announced the intent to set up an Air Force Cyber Command.

Shortly after the deposition of the PTI government by the incumbent Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) alliance in the first half of 2022, the budget was approved to set up a Sino-Pak Centre for Artificial Intelligence (SPCAI) at the Pak-Austria Fachhochschule: Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology (PAF-IAST) in Haripur, which purportedly collaborates through linkages with academia and industries in Austria and China. Also, in the same year, the Pakistan Army announced the inauguration of its Cyber Command, which reportedly consists of two divisions, one of which (the Army Centre of Emerging Technologies) is reasonably believed to include AI in its focus areas.

The incumbent PDM government, through the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, had reportedly constituted a 15-member National Task Force (NTF) on Artificial Intelligence with the purported objective of supporting national development, even before the draft policy was published. The dichotomy is mind-boggling since MoITT has the primary mandate of supervising ICT-related initiatives.

Ignoring the Elephants in the Room

The authors of the draft National AI Policy are surprisingly oblivious or intentionally ignorant of major obstacles to its proper appreciation and implementation (adoption).

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 18, 2023 at 7:03pm

Forget world domination, India won’t catch up with China any time soon

https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3215379/hype-over-indi...

It will take many years of stellar economic growth for India to begin matching China in economic importance, and no amount of miraculous thinking or “China plus one” investment is likely to accelerate that.
Also, many other important economic indicators remain problematic. India accounted for about 1 per cent of global manufacturing in 2000, compared with 7 per cent for China. By last year, India’s share had grown to 3 per cent against China’s 31 per cent. In 2000, India accounted for just 1 per cent of the world’s exports, and China 2 per cent. By last year, China accounted for 15 per cent of global exports against India’s share of 2 per cent.

India enthusiasts celebrate the youthfulness of India’s population, but ignore the reality that this is a problem rather than an advantage when they are poorly educated or even illiterate. To accommodate them, India must produce an estimated 90 million new jobs before 2030.
Allison reminds us that China produces twice as many STEM-qualified (in science, technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates as India, spends almost three times the percentage of its GDP on research and development, and produces 65 per cent of the world’s artificial intelligence patents (vs India’s 3 per cent).
As Bloomberg noted in April: “India is far behind China in key aspects important for manufacturing that include infrastructure, bureaucracy, attention to detail and even a sense of urgency.”

Supporters of India in search of a “hobble China” narrative have been encouraged by companies such as Apple and its main Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, which have made tentative steps to build investments in India, but ignore the challenges they have faced, and the reality that China remains their main manufacturing base.
They have ignored the withdrawals of companies like the Royal Bank of Scotland, Harley-Davidson and Citibank, and the many other companies with plans on hold. They have tended to celebrate the deliberate obstacles to prospective investment in China, even where China is a natural partner and the benefit of collaboration is huge.
Rather than harbouring dreams of dominating the world, India’s policymakers would benefit us all by opening up their economy and recognising that even if India does not surpass China, it can still be a huge driver in the global economy. China and India together account for one third of the world’s population, one third of the global consumer class, and a quarter of all consumer spending in purchasing power parity terms.
The 21st century may not be India’s century, but it is almost certainly Asia’s. Washington needs to come to terms with that, and perhaps New Delhi does too.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 20, 2023 at 11:08am

The Science of Self-Confidence

https://misesindia.in/2023/08/20/the-science-of-self-confidence/

POSTED ON AUGUST 20, 2023 BY JAYANT BHANDARI

Several of us had gone to visit a top Indian bureaucrat. While we entered his room and stood, he kept looking at his cell phone with his glasses reflecting his Facebook page. It took him a while to lift his face and recognize us. He perhaps thought we would be impressed by how loaded with responsibility he was. I was thinking about how juvenile in an adult body he was. What a life of stress he lived playing his drama day in and day out.

People worry about being confident in social affairs. Many courses run to polish social skills and to learn to radiate an aura of confidence. Many self-help books have been written, some good, some bad, and some that teach one to be psychopathic and manipulative.

While the tricks and put-on social mannerisms might help in the short term, one eventually becomes more confused. In this exploration, I draw upon my observations growing up in India, shedding light on what contributes to genuine self-assurance and what leads to confusion.

Indian culture is structured to control its populace through humiliation and punishment. Parents and teachers have no compunctions about beating children. The berating and demeaning behavior continues into adulthood. Nothing is on equal terms. One side must address the other as “sir.” The same people are either obsequious or arrogant, depending on whom they are dealing with. No one escapes this quagmire, not even those at the top.

Indians end up thoroughly broken, crippled psychologically and spiritually. The culture emphasizes might over right, overshadowing values like reason, morality, and fairness.

To cover up their psychological deficiencies, Indians desperately crave power. They need the crutches of a fleet of servants or bodyguards, a desperate attempt for status. But it is an escape. Their hearts know what they are. Those in power show their power by being busy and heavy-handed, forever afraid of getting too close to anyone, for it would entail the risk of their inner hollowness getting found out. They end up surrounded by mindless sycophants, an existence that any sane person would run away from.

Most people never make it that far and spend their life crawling up in a rat race for power, money, and status. They desperately need the approval of others and to be a part of a cult or group they can identify with. Many people chose to lose their identity in the mob, religious rituals, superstitions, or in being mindless slaves.

However, there is a way out for those who choose to be free, escape the maze, have their own minds, and have an honorable existence.

To Indians, Westerners look the most confident and self-satisfied. They think copying specific Western ways—their language, clothing, etc.—is how to get similar confidence. While these are valuable tools in their own right, they cannot build self-confidence.

Worse, Indians copy what is not even Western values: promiscuity, drinking, drugs, hip-hop, flirting, etc. They only see and find attracted to what the worldview they developed during their upbringing makes them.

Western confidence comes from being better rooted in universal principles. This is only possible in a culture of free exchange and criticism of ideas, a culture of reason, respect for others, “even” for children and animals, the search for truth, and a culture of introspection.

Beyond the Western world, the dynamics shift. East Asian cultures embrace elements of Western institutions while retaining a higher emphasis on honor and personal responsibility. However, they don’t encourage independent thinking as much as the West does, are socialized to participate in the rat race, and are left vulnerable to peer pressure. Their confidence suffers.

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