Tech Mahindra Finally Takes on OpenAI

Can't read or see images? View this email in a browser

Sunday, Aug 27, 2023 | Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here While most Indian IT companies are still figuring out how to use generative AI effectively, Tech Mahindra has taken the lead. Through Project Indus, they're creating their own advanced language model to enhance communication across various Indian languages, starting with Hindi. This puts them at the forefront, challenging OpenAI. Led by CP Gurnani, Project Indus is part of Makers Lab, an innovation arm of Tech Mahindra. With this latest project, the company is embarking on a journey to create India’s very own foundational model. In the first phase, it aims to cover 40 Hindi dialects (Kinnauri, Kangri, Chambeli, Garhwali, Kumaoni, Jaunsari and more), followed by other Indian languages and dialects, and serve 25% of the world’s population. Click here to contribute.  What about the others?  Even though a majority of Indian IT companies – the likes of Infosys, TCS and Wipro – have an equivalent of Makers Lab, there haven’t been substantial advancements in the generative AI landscape so far, barring a few strategic partnerships with technology companies, educational institutes, and cloud enablers to cater to the customers’ needs.  Tech Mahindra seems to be ahead of the curve. India is home to 122 major languages and 1599 other languages, along with 22 official languages. There is a significant dearth of local language content in training AI models and tools, and Project Indus is really a good start.  Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani-backed AI4Bharath is also solving similar problems, where the team is working on developing open-source datasets, tools, models and applications for Indian languages. Last year, the Indian government also introduced Project Bhashini, in collaboration with Microsoft, creating language datasets and AI applications with crowdsourcing initiatives such as Bhasha Daan and others.  Project Indus is a much-needed initiative in this direction. Gurnani urged people of different vocabularies to contribute to making this project successful as an LLM is only as good as the data it is trained on. Looks like Tech Mahindra is the only company to be working on its promises, at the moment. Read: Generative AI is Just Fluff Talk for Indian IT Top Stories of the Week >> NVIDIA Sells GPUs, Not Shovels  NVIDIA recently announced record-breaking earnings of $13.51 billion in FY23 Q2. For the upcoming third quarter of FY23, it projects a revenue of $16 billion. But, how long will its winning streak continue amid all that talk about GPU shortage? Read the full story to find out.  Why India Has Become a Hotspot for Data Centre Investments Over the past months, there's been a surge in investment announcements for data centres in India with Sify investing over $360 million, Atlassian planning Indian data centres, and AWS committing $12.7 billion for expansion.  Supporting this trend, Kotak Alternate Assets plans an $800 million investment for 5-7 major data centres. That’s not all, Yotta Data Services' cofounder, Sunil Gupta, recently revealed their India data centre business expansion plans too.  But, why are companies suddenly so interested in Indian data centre investment? Read to find out more.  Meta’s Code Llama is Here, But Unnaturally Meta recently unveiled Code Llama, its code generation model. It generates code from both code and natural language prompts. The company announced four versions of Code Llama — Code Llama, Code Llama Instruct, Code Llama Python, and Unnatural Code Llama, each with varying capacities: 7B, 13B, and 34B parameters.  However, the release only included the first three versions of Code Llama except Unnatural Code Llama. But, why? Read more to find out.  People & Tech >> There’s No Escape for Criminals in India Be it the high-profile celebrity assassination cases, political massacres, or controversial cases, one company at the centre of it all is Staqu Technologies and its AI-powered video analytics model Jarvis.  In an exclusive interview with AIM, the co-founder of the company, Atul Rai, shares details of how their technology has helped in identifying thousands of criminals in the country, alongside catering to the AI and analytics needs of its retail, manufacturing and hospitality customers.  Check out the complete interview here. AIM Events >> CDO Vision Singapore Last week, AIM Leaders Council successfully concluded the first edition of CDO Vision Singapore, an exclusive networking event. The event sparked insightful discussions, offered fresh perspectives, and provided avenues for collaboration, further enriching professional connections.  What's on the horizon? CDO Vision Dubai. AIM Shots >> Nirmala Sitharaman recently called out IBM for being outside the realm of Atmanirbhar Bharat, in a panel discussion at the B20 Summit. Read more here. Zepto becomes the first Indian unicorn of 2023, after raising $200 million, propelling its valuation to a remarkable $1.4 billion.  Meta recently pulled the plug on Messenger Lite and users are not happy.  After the successful touchdown of Chandrayaan-3’s lander in the south of the Moon, ISRO and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have decided to jointly launch LUPEX, a successor to Chandrayaan-3, in 2026. Read more here. Hugging Face secured $235 million ​​at a $4.5 billion valuation in a Series D funding round, from Google, Amazon, NVIDIA, Salesforce, AMD, Intel, IBM, and Qualcomm. More details about the funding can be found here. Modular, a startup for simplifying the development and optimisation of AI systems, secured $100 million in funding through a round led by General Catalyst, with participation from Google Ventures, SV Angel, Greylock, and Factory.  OpenAI recently partnered with San Francisco-based data labelling startup Scale to help more companies benefit from fine-tuning its text-generating model GPT-3.5. Read: The Real Reason Why OpenAI Partnered with Scale Gupshup announced the launch of ACE LLM, a family of domain-specific LLMs specialised for functions such as marketing, commerce, support, HR & IT, and industries like banking, retail, utilities and more. HCLTech announced its partnership with AWS to accelerate the adoption of generative AI at the company and by enterprises globally. VMware introduced new Private AI offerings to drive enterprise adoption of generative AI and tap into the value of trusted data. Microsoft is looking to integrate generative AI in Windows 11 applications, including Photos, Snipping Tool, and Paint with generative AI capabilities such as text-to-image. Statistics pioneer C Radhakrishna Rao, a recipient of the International Prize in Statistics, passed away at the age of 102 in the US. Download our mobile app Access our stories, video content and events on the go. Stay Connected info@analyticsindiamag.com © 2023 Analytics India Magazine Pvt Ltd and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. For more information, email info@analyticsindiamag.com

This email was sent by support@analyticsindiamag.com to alexvarboffin.abbb@blogger.com Not interested? Unsubscribe | Manage Preference | Update profile Analytics India Magazine | 280, 2nd floor, 5th Main, 15 A cross, Sector 6, HSR layout Bengaluru, Karnataka 560102