AI can help you ask more intelligent questions ..

An AI generated image

I have always believed intelligence is of different forms and even animals have intelligence, sometimes may be superior or inferior to us , as to how we perceive it to be. Asking the right questions may bring in the next wave of innovation to the world.

Refer to the HBR article AI can help you ask better questions - and solve bigger problems by Hal Gregersen, May 23 (click here) made real interesting reading.

The AI be in ML or Neural networks on Computer Vision, there is so much intelligence in the system waiting to be tapped. Are we smart enough to ask the right questions and get the answers from the machine.

Human mind is limited by the range of questions one can ask. But if we start asking interesting and different questions to the AI system, we will be surprised at the variety of innovative answers we can expect from the system.

 The more we ask questions, AI will give answers from its stock of data according to what it has understood and has been taught. For some questions for which there is no answer or we thought no answer is possible, shoot it to the AI and see what it pumps out. It may be an interesting output which could open new areas of thought and knowledge.

George.

Natural milk and protein alternative from Synthite, Kolencherry ..

Biotech research has taken Synthite to commercialise the research on plant based dairy alternative (replacement for milk).  Just Plants from Synthite Kolencherry has come out of the research labs of IISc Bangalore biotechnology department.. www.pfoods.in

Just Plants, is the substitute for natural milk and Plotein, the substitute for eggs from Synthite. The company name is pfoods.

Commercialisation of this IISc Bangalore biotech research is going great places with this product. 

 

During the Covid time it was biotech research that helped humanity overcome the Covid virus attack by developing natural vaccines, Edward Jenner in 1796, 225 years back, developed the first vaccine against smallpox by infecting the patient with the mild cowpox virus that gave the patient immunity against the smallpox virus. In another brilliant development in 2019-20 synthetic vaccines by the mRNA approach were developed and patented by Pfizer.

Humanity has come to appreciate the hold and advantage biotechnology research can have on humans from the Covid crisis. In the coming days we can expect more such virus scares to hold the world to ransom and biotech will be our saviour.

Protecting human race from viruses is one aspect, providing humans will good quality energy generating, protein, vitamin rich food is the other part. 

 

Biotechnology again comes to our rescue. There are many such biotech products available in the market, it shows how much biotech research motivated Lab foods are going to help humanity tide over the environmental concerns associated with natural food production, the animal route or plant route.

Carbon footprint has been reduced by 95% for both these items. From the present earth population of 8 billion when we grow to 12 billion and plateau by 2075, these are the future foods that will be sustaining all of us. 

www.pfoods.in  (items are available at Bigbasket and amazon retail)

 

George..

Who owns Generative AI output ?

Who owns the Generative AI output ? Is it the AI company that owns the AI system or the user who gave the triggering words that triggered the output or the public whose data is being manipulated by the AI companies that have collected this data by hook or crook ?

This is a big question that needs to be addressed urgently in the near future. The AI algorithm uses the data of the public, conditioned by the textual prompt provided by the user to generate the output. The generative AI image on the right is taken from the app Dream AI.

 

I asked this question to many users and my students, they were equally unclear as to who rightly owns this.

 

The data was taken from the users, not from one user, but from millions of users across the world over the past thirty years and it will be really difficult to pinpoint which customer gave what data exactly to decide on the financial reparation to them.

Appel et al in their HBR article, Generative AI has an intellectual property problem (click here) has rightly pointed out this issue. 

As per the article and legal interpretation, the term fair use is very confusing. 

fair use doctrine, (which) allows copyrighted work to be used without the owner’s permission “for purposes such as criticism (including satire), comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research,” and for a transformative use of the copyrighted material in a manner for which it was not intended.

  To make it fair for both the customer and the artist or copyright owner, the copyright owner should be asked before the data is used for the process of generative AI. Apps like Stabble Diffusion, Midjourney have taken the dataset called LAION 5B data set which was assembled with millions of points of data got by scraping the web. Is it legal and ethical to do so is a serious question all of us need to be worried. While AI companies will take necessary precaution in their future versions of the generative AI app, like Stable Diffusion has made it clear, the content owners also need to be clear of what items of work will be out in public domain and which will not be. 

Businesses need to mention of this protection from legal complications while purchasing generative AI output from providers that the companies are bound by the laws of the land and is sure that the owners rights regarding use of copyrighted material is properly and legally taken care of.

The only solution to this seems to be generative AI generated creative art sourcing images from open source images available across the net.

Will the canvas expand to include more legalities and rights in the coming years only time can tell. 

George.

Toyota visit and the Evolution timeline theme park ..

Along with students we visited the Toyota plant on 8th Sept, 2022. This visit was very special, for the first time I visited with students from sem 3 and sem 4, the Ecozone in the Toyota Kirloskar 432 acre green campus Bidadi. 

After reaching the campus at 8.30 AM and a small breakfast, we were taken to the Toyota Technical Training Institute, where the student trainees were having their morning assembly, Rajio Taiso. It was interesting to note that Toyota trainees were getting international honours in the World Skills competition and even for the recent skills competition in 2022 May in Switzerland, Toyota Bidadi had clinched honours.

After the TTTI visit we were taken to the Toyota Plaza and Ecozone where 17 ecological based theme parks are opened for the public, ranging from evergreen forests, Underground Ecology, wet pavilion, energy, Biodiversity, Medicinal garden, pollination meadow, rainwater pond, solar parks, organic farms, climate change and sacred groves theme parks.

What was surprising to me was the Open Earth Evolution Timeline theme park which took me through an open area having five arches stepping across 440 million years of the earth's evolutionary history separated by the five events of mass extinctions. This is very unique in the sense no other organisation in the world has an open  park based on this theme that concerns the whole of humanity. Besides what surprised me was to see the vegetation that existed at that time was identified and was specially grown through gene therapy or so and was planted on the left side of the pathway in the order of the great mass extinctions that have been studied.

• Ordovician-silurian Extinction: 440 million years ago.
• Devonian Extinction: 365 million years ago.
• Permian-triassic Extinction: 250 million years ago.
• Triassic-jurassic Extinction: 210 million years ago.
• Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction: 65 Million Years Ago. (wikipedia.org)

On the left side you see the vegetation during the period of the timeline

I have to specially thank Toyota management for taking the pains of organising such a great park of massive anthropological significance and enabling visitor walk-through through this partial evolution timeline of our earth. (440 million years of the 4560 million years of earth existence).

The experience was a stunning one. In one shot, I was taken back 440 million years in our evolution history all the way to the last 60 million years and to the present day.  What was mesmerising and surprising is being told that I could see the growth of multicellular vegetation that existed during that time on planet earth now in the Toyota Bidadi ecozone. I could not believe my eyes.

A most unique opportunity in the world. Nowhere in the world in the open you have such a theme park with some of the plants, moss and other fauna that existed during that ancient time, millions of years back, growing on the land and in water. I am really surprised to hear that this open evolution theme park is the first of its kind in India and also possibly in the world. This requires a great amount of study, planning and execution. I am sure that this would be Toyota's pride offering to any international guest that comes to this plant of Toyota.

Let me reassert that offering such a park is beyond one's imagination and reach, Toyota management needs to be specially applauded for thinking out of the box and maintaining this theme park for the present day earthlings, who have appeared just in the last one million years of the earth's 4560 million years of evolution. In this real-life 3D spatial representation of the timeline spread over a distance of about 50 metres (a time span of 440 million years), the human evolution happens only in the last 10 cms or so. 

We are unable to post pictures as we were not permitted to take pictures within the Toyota campus. Being interested in the earth's evolutionary history and anthropology, this experience was mesmerising,  bewitching, enchanting, out of this world and beyond words .. 

Thank you very much Toyota Kirloskar Motors. When almost 30MW of power, 100%, for the plant is generated renewable basis from solar power and 95% of he water requirements are met through rain water harvesting and recycling, it speaks volumes of Toyota's commitment to the environment and it's integrity and credibility as an environmental sustainability leader.

We were taken to the safety department where training was given to the students on the different aspects of motor safety. The visit also saw the students playing the Just in Time simulation game in the training area in 2 sessions. The first session involved a game where a natural setup without JIT operations was conducted. In the afternoon, the game was repeated with JIT controlled processes and the students were able to understand how JIT approach improves quality and vehicle output from the assembly line by almost 4x. 

We left the campus by 4.PM and reached Uty campus by almost 7 PM. A repeat  visit was promised by Toyota to the Toyota shopfloor as presently the shopfloor was out of reach for the public due to release of a Toyota EV by December 2022. 

We could see Toyota's commitment to quality, standardisation, personal well being, health and the preservation of environment and natural resources. This is what makes Toyota different from the crowd. 

George.

How has Amazon and AI changed our lives ?

 

When was the last time you went to a shop to buy books, dresses, footwear, electronic gadgets, home furnishings, home furniture or home cleaning items and the like ?

It will come as a big surprise to realise that over the past four or five years ever since the Covid scourge, almost all of the above purchases went online and were made over the net with the help of a website. The order fulfilment went flawless. The deliveries were on time, the product features and performance were as promised, the product was authentic. 

The product returns if any, went flawlessly, one never had to followup regarding refunds and pickup. If ever one felt like talking about a product or delivery to a customer service executive, it was just a click away.

When was the last time one went to a shop to book travel tickets, flight, rail or bus and book our stay at hotels across the country or to buy medicines ? Our shift to the online comfortable mode is more or less over and complete except for visits to the doctor and dentist.

When was the last time we went to a bank to withdraw money or open a fixed deposit or pay our monthly EMIs and our utilities bills ? We carry excess money in our digital wallets and not in  the physical ones. The technology behind United Payment Interface (UPI) and the many digital wallets have made transactons easier, reliable and documented. Even our visits to entertainment hubs, theatres, sports and games complexes have been secured digitally. 

Life over the past five years has become a lot more easier, pleasant, enjoyable, safe and secure. Thanks to technology and technological interventions. Artificial intelligence has played a great role in smoothening and expediting these experiences enabling creation of a  very fertile land for great innovations to follow.

The healthcare sector, justifiable so, remains still in the physical domain, till when ? The digital illustrations are copyrighted and created through Generative AI. 

Our lifestyle has changed a lot. AI so far, is working for the benefit of humanity ..

George 

Hydraulic Fracturing or Fracking

I am not a big fan of fossil fuels as I am worried about the impact of fossil fuel extraction, impact of oil wells and empty reservoirs in the earth's crust on likelihood of pollution of water bodies and tectonic activity and the impact of burning fossil fuels on the atmosphere. 

Hydraulic fracturing is used to increase the rate at which substances such as petroleum or natural gas can be recovered from subterranean natural reservoirs.- Wikipedia.

From 1940s a parallel activity with less environmental impact is being carried out to extract mainly natural gases ( Methane) from these fragmented and separated gas and oil wells called shale gas and oil reserves.

Click here for an excellent video.

 

Though the discovery of shale gas and drilling of shale wells has brought immediate prosperity to the local communities by way of increased taxes and revenues for infrastructure development and so on, the damages it causes in the long run also needs to be studied. The main concerns raised by the public against fracking are

 

1. use of water to fracture the rocks, 70 to 140 billion gallons every year (500-600 billion litres of water) . This could lead to water being converted for non-human activities.

 

2. Contamination of ground water resources, leading to future generations taking the brunt of the health issues

 

3. while oil reservoirs are concentrated, the shale wells are small, shallow and more distributed resulting in large areas getting polluted and made barren

 

4. the possibility of tectonic activities that can result after the crust has been fractured at many places leading to instability.

 

5. The presence of proppants in the shale wells drilled, can be a lasting environmental threat over many years due to the chemicals and surfactants in the proppants

 

Most of the shale wells produce gases and some oil too, the gross impact on the environment is lot less than created by oil wells. In the short run the impact on the environment may not be severe but we are yet to fully understand its impact of the environment in the long run.

 

How can planet earth provide enough food for its inhabitants ?

We are already 8 billion people on planet earth. The two big challenges staring us at our faces is 

• a growing population that would hit 10 billion by 2050 AD and possibly peak at about 12 billion and then level out.
• Climate change reducing land under cultivation and the depleting fresh water reserves

Image courtesy The Hindu

How can we overcome these two challenges. ?

It was interesting to go thru an article in CNN (click here)  that list out six innovations.

• Plant based coatings - that can prevent fruits and farm produce rotting or wilting
• Climate resilient crops - that can thrive even in salt sea water
• Precision farming - using digital mapping, drones and sensors to administer exact pesticides, precise watering, preventing adulteration of nearby lands 
• Insect protein - is grown as food for worms that convert food waste into protein-rich feed for poultry or cattle, even humans 
• Producing food sustainably - preserving eco-diversity across all ecosystems including coastal, marine and terrestrial, including forests, agricultural land and urban areas
  
• Urban farming - using vertical farming in urban areas like old buildings, warehouses etc help to get almost 10 times the output from horizontal farming, by making use of LED lights, giving water at the roots of plants, with no chemical fertiliser use.

Wasting less food on our dining tables and kitchen and using more of greens and fruits is one of the best ways to ensure that humanity will never run out of food in the coming decades.

George.