Month: December 2021

AI-assisted Chips (semi-conductors)

Shabbir Chunawalla

Digital assistant Siri responds by recognising speech. The more it is spoken to, the more competent it becomes. Speech recognition has lesser error rate today. Digital assistants recognise even accents. All this has happened over a period of time. To accelerate this process, one has to feed great amount of data and compute power to the system. There are instances where this has to be done instantly. AI assisted systems do this. In a car braking system of an autonomous car, there should be an instant response.

These days chips are made with AI acceleration. Semiconductor industry is developing such chips. Big Tech too develops such chips. India is in the forefront of designing such chips.

An aircraft in flight generates a lot of data, which is to be analysed in real time to detect if something is failing. In plants, a lot of equipment generates data that is to be analysed. It is humanly impossible to do this in real time. Here some data is processed by edge computing and some at the server. Thus it is a hybrid system. Intel’s new processors with AI acceleration address such kind of applications. In software such analytics is not fast enough. Even GPU are used for graphics processing. They too fall short of the emerging requirements.

Such situations require an ML algorithm running on hardware. A software programme launched on lap top competes for time from the processor (CPU), as there are other programmes running. If the information is hardware-based, the hardware does it immediately. Since that is what it is designed to do.

Different functions require different AI enabled chips. IBM’s Telium processor has on chip acceleration for AI is targeted to financial services. Whether to use a chip designed for a specific AI application or a general purpose chip is taken in the light of the software capabilities of an organisation. A specific chip requires more software capabilities.

Metaverse and Indian Advertising

Shabbir Chunawalla

In India, brands soon must formulate their metaverse strategy. Metaverse is an amalgam of the physical and digital. The implications of this must be understood. There are new opportunities. These days brands have web-sites, social media profiles and apps. Soon each brand will have a metaverse calling card.

Some brands have already created their own virtual world — Warner Bros, Gucci and Hyundai. Some sneak into this world by selling NFTs — Coca Cola, Crockpot and Anheuser-Busch. Some create AR-VR experiences — Nike, HBO, Sephora.

Indian brands so far are indifferent to the metaverse. India has a conducive environment — millions of gamers, mobile game downloads, a thriving film industry in Bollywood capable of producing Bollyverse, good repertoire of cooking recipes and so on. Its a whole new world waiting to be exploited.

Cryptos : Play Safe

Shabbir Chunawalla

RBI is concerned about the financial instability that can be caused by cryptos. Investments in cryptos could be made by over-leveraged individuals and firms. They can go broke.

Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan observes that there is little danger of Indian currency becoming dollarised, as cryptos are highly volatile, and the rupee will be a preferred option. RBI will not find it difficult to ensure the local currency is not substituted by cryptos. Thus cryptos would not be risky to framing monetory policy.

It is true that regulators around the world are struggling to understand cryptos, and are not sure how these could be regulated. Even if there are few black sheep, it could cause considerable damage.

Despite the ban, it is unlikely that investments in cryptos will be discontinued. The government must ensure that investments must not be made from borrowings — banks, NBFCs and so on. Here vigilance is to be exercised.

There are more than 6000 private cryptos in the world. In India, a few are popular. On what basic, the government can allow certain cryptos?

It is not sufficient to regulate the exchanges, as they are mere intermediaries. The technology is based on distributed ledger. The mining is done by anonymous people, and the structure is opaque. This the USP of private cryptos. Is it possible to regulate such persons or system?

Cryptos and the Keys

Shabbir Chunawalla

It is still being debated whether cryptos are securities, commodities. currencies or assets. However, in form, they are uniform.

All digital assets such as Bitcoin, an NFT, a utility token or a stablecoin are just a pair of cryptographic keys, irrespective of their value.

The public key is the visible key on the ledger — it serves as a user name of sorts. The private key is the secret key known only to the user which confers ownership of the asset and enables the user to transact in any crypto network.

The whole gamut of crypto operations is conducted by these two humble keys. Any crypto regulation focuses on the management and custody of these keys.

Privacy Breaches

Shabbir Chunawalla

In a democracy, there should be a balance between the power of the state and the autonomy of the individual. Of course, no fundamental right is absolute, there should be justification when a fundamental right is curtailed. In the US there should be a court order to breach any citizen’s privacy. In India too, such a provision can be introduced. Besides, all instances of such authorized breach of privacy must be subjected to a review by a Parliamentory Committee.

If state agencies indulge in surveillance of citizens for prosecuting or for protecting national security, they cannot be given carte blanche to violate citizen rights.

Social media platforms should too be held accountable for the content they host just like other publishers. That will lessen the burden on content moderation.

Outdoor

Shabbir Chunawalla

There should be regular monitoring of outdoor advertising. There should be suitable rules for maintaining an aesthetic landscape. There should be well-defined and stringent application of these rules. Professional companies must be encouraged, rather than fly-by-night operators.

The formats of the future are Digital OOH and programmatic OOH (DOOH and pDOOH). Outdoors have symbiotic relationship with digital advertising. If OOH increased its efficiency, there is going to be good digital advertising. Outdoor, being in the public domain, helps in more clicks on the digital medium.

There will be greater penetration of outdoor in smaller markets.

There are many challenges. There is lack of unified system of measurement of the effectiveness of the outdoors. There is no specific formula to calculate the RoI. DOOH enables tracking, and thus gives hope.

OOH is changing, and works better than the conventional medium. There is increased traffic, visibility and personalisation. It makes the medium attractive. Content in digital outdoor can be monitored in real time.

Social Feed Purge

Shabbir Chunawalla

There is a frequent churn in the social feed, and stale content is replaced by fresh content. The attempt is to remain evergreen in campaigning. We have to capture the young audience and arrest its attention. There is no focus just on the next brand but on the entire internet.

At times, the phrase used is to go dark. There is nothing sinister or illegal about it. You come back later after a break. There are corporate brands and people brands. Corporate brands must follow logic. It should not be just a gimmick. You should not be out of sight for long. However, you can plan a rebrand or a launch. Personal branding is what is said about you in absentia. Going dark is just a way to assess this. There are legacy brands, having so much of consumer speak. Going dark works better for legacy brands.

Going dark on social media arouses curiosity, especially with an invested audience. It is a move that engage them more.

There should be attention to brand continuity while doing this. The come back too should be equally powerful. Or else the whole thing lacks the wow factor. People who love you keep you alive.

Going offline is one way to get noticed. Brands can step back and come later rejuvenated. Brand changes can be introduced by being offline. Absence makes the consumers realise the value of the brand. Marketers become proactive in the whole exercise.

Inclusive and Safe Internet

Shabbir Chunawalla

Internet access is considered a fundamental right by the Supreme Court. With the spread of internet, we require cybersecurity measures. Tim Bernes-Lee, the inventor of World Wide Web, feels that the web should be recognised as a human right, and should be used for the public good.

IIGF or the new India Internet Governance Forum works in this direction. It wants to ensure safe internet practices, establish internet governance and digital inclusion. It is modelled on the principles laid down by the UN. There should be safe and accessible internet for all. At the same time, internet should be inclusive regardless of gender, disability or economic status.

There is a gender gap in internet usage. There are more male internet users. Internet should be accessible to persons with some kind of disability. Many apps are not fully compliant with universal design standards. We should adopt assistive technology (AT). There should be accessibility in regional languages. There should be affordability.

The divide between urban and rural population must be bridged.

There is dark side to internet — cyber crime, security breaches, fraud, bullying and targeting of vulnerable people. Cybersecurity must have multi- pronged approach. Both public and private sector as well as the users must come together and fight for internet safety.

Cryptos and RBI

Shabbir Chunawalla

Cryptos are matter of concern for the RBI on four possible counts.

Monetary Sovereignty

Cryptos erode monetary sovereignty especially with stablecoins which are pegged to a reserve asset such as a dollar, one to one. Bitcoins were okay, as these were backed by no more than algorithm.

The reserve backing provides gravitas to pull transactions away from the national currency. RBI loses its ability to set the interest rate, calibrate money supply and control inflation.

Facebook’s proposed stablecoin Diem could become a viable competitor to fiat currencies.

Dollar-backed stablecoins are advantageous to the US and therefore the US will be disinclined to regulate them.

Conduits for Capital Outflows

Investors put domestic money in crypto exchanges, and exit out of it abroad in a hard currency. China is reported to have lost as much as $80 billion through cryptos in 2020. Therefore, it banned all crypto transactions.

Financial Instability

Cryptos are highly volatile, e.g. Bitcoin fluctuates between $1000 to $70000 in recent times. It is akin to Tulip mania of the 17th century. Such volatility makes banks vulnerable.

Loss of Seigniorage Revenue

RBI buys assets such as government securities. It pays for those by printing currency. The returns earned by RBI are called seigniorage revenues. Ultimately, it accrues to the government. Cryptos could eat into this revenue.

Product Managers

Shabbir Chunawalla

In fintech, there is lot of product development. There is product development in neo banks. Product management also covers large-scale building of tech products by understanding the user needs, designing the product, understanding the features needed. There is a whole science to it. You may not have technical knowledge, but you must have critical thinking, eye for design and logical ability.