Month: February 2022

Baby and Bathwater

Shabbir Chunawalla

Big Tech, it is alleged, have used hate speech, and is running all sorts of fake stories. It becomes defensive then. Policy makers rush in to restrain Big Tech. Big Tech needs better regulation and management simply because they have enormous sway over people’s attention and make money from advertisers by monetising this attention. Some are extremely elated when Big Tech is brought to its knees. However, Big Tech is not all that bad. Big Tech is baby which is to be thrown out with bathwater. Is that right?

Big Tech is an inalienable part of our lives. Digital technologies are central to the way we work, play, learn, socialise and entertain ourselves. These Big Tech firms provide vital information round the clock. They help people fight authoritarian tendencies and injustice. They democratise communication. They have taken away monopoly over the audiences by a select few.

Small business in millions are encouraged by the social media. They are connected to their customers. In fact, many start their online journey here. They make available any customer anywhere in the world. Amazon helps digitisation of small business.

Out-of-Home (OOH) Media

Shabbir Chunawalla

The recent pandemic has adversely affected the OOH media. In 2019, the industry was worth as much as Rs.3910 crore. Due to Covid, the revenue fell down to Rs.1560 crore in 2020. It is expected to return to its pre-Covid level in 2024. In early 2021, many FMCG brands, real estate and automotive companies invested in OOH advertising. There were signs of recovery. Later, with the second wave, the situation worsened. Market spends were diverted to digital and TV. Clients demanded discounts on existing contracts. Companies have been retaining marquee locations and cutting on low-ROI locations.

Tata’s Proposed Semiconductor Plant

Shabbir Chunawalla

Tata is expected to invest $300 million to set up a semi-conductor assembly and test unit. They are likely to set up the plant in South India. It will make outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT). Such a plant packages, assembles and tests foundry-made silicon wafers. These are turned into finished semiconductor chips.

As we know, Tatas are very strong on the software side. They would like to add hardware to their product portfolio. It is very critical for long-term growth.

The potential clients for OSATs are Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and STMicroelectronics. Separately, Tata is already building a high-tech electronics manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu.

Role of Journalists

Shabbir Chunawalla

Journalists play a role larger than what has been traditionally defined. First, they keep watch on powers that be. Secondly, they amplify voices which otherwise go unheard. Thirdly, they believe that society works better with information out in the open. Fourthly, the more facts people have, the closer they will get to the truth. Finally, it is necessary to highlight community’s problems to solve them.

AI and Uncertainty

Shabbir Chunawalla

A car is being driven by AI-assisted engine. In a particular situation, it predicts that killing the occupants of the car would save many more lives in the event of an upcoming crash. This decision must be made in seconds. Should the occupant be killed or saved?

Consider an AI-monitored weapon system. In a war, it decides to kill a thousand persons to save a million lives. AI has to make the choice.

It is not easy to figure out its preference ordering. Even those who program it cannot do it. It is not known what goes into the black-box of decision making.

A chess game AlphaZero purely trained on ML was simply fed the rules of the game, and to maximise the wins. It was not trained by humans. It did the rest. It breached the limits of the game. It sacrificed unusual pieces including the Queen to win.

Halicin, MIT-designed AI programme identified a drug molecule out of many that worked against target bacteria. It worked like a chess game. It found a new antibiotic.

It is uncertain how these programmes achieved their goals.

Effectiveness of Digital Advertising

Shabbir Chunawalla

The effectiveness of digital ads could be measured by the conversions these ads make. These conversions depend highly on the user experience.

Ad experience is a mix of a web-site’s layout, its behaviour, its content and ads it carries. Experience decides whether a user will come back to the web-site or not. A publisher has to plan the ad experience which generates ad revenue, and makes it comfortable for the user.

Decluttering provides better ad experience. There are annoying ads, e.g. ads that auto-play with sound, pop-up ads, ads that interrupt the reading etc. The NYT carries ads only in banners, and uses the power of native ads. These are more effective than display ads. They seamlessly integrate to the content.

There should be immersive user experience. The idea is to create highly viewable and performance-driven ads. These should flash across display, video and native. They should engage for more time and generate page views.

The Guardian puts several high-impact ads throughout its contents, thus leading to enhanced user engagement, and thus revenues. These ads are interactive.

Page-load time is a key factor — it is the time a web-site takes to load. A user switches to another web-site if the web-site is slow-loading. It leads to loss of ad revenue. It is observed that by improving page load time, the performance increases. The Washington Post uses native banner ads to have excellent page-load time.

A user continues to stay on the web-site. It can be assessed by a heat map. It assessed by a heat map. It shows how a user interacts with the different elements on the web-site. There should be layout optimisation depending on the time spent on a particular element.

The actual content of the ads too matters. The number of ads on a page also matters.

The relevance of the ads to matters.

Facebook’s Internal Recruitment for AR-VR Roles

Shabbir Chunawalla

Though Metaverse still remains a theoretical concept, Facebook considers it the next phase of internet, and has started doing internal recruitment of manpower for roles in augmented reality and virtual reality. At the same time, it is doing recruitment externally from rivals such as Apple and Microsoft. It has rebranded products like Oculus (virtual reality headsets) with Meta name.

Meta has 68000 plus employees. It has listed 3000 open job vacancies on its website, of which 24 per cent are for roles in AR-VR.

Hacking of Smart Phones

Shabbir Chunawalla

Smart phones use operating systems — either iOS of Apple or Android in most of other phones. In their software, the hacking firms try to spot vulnerabilities to sneak into the phone and access the data. Two Israel-based companies, NSO Group making Pegasus and QuaDream, have been using reportedly such vulnerabilities to hack the phones for their clients.

Generally, hackers introduce the malware when the user clicks a malicious link. However, the Israel-based firms use the zero-click technique. Both used similar software exploits called ForcedEntry. It is a computer code designed to leverage a set of specific software vulnerabilities. It provides a hacker unauthorized access to data.

These vulnerabilities could be hidden deep inside the instant messaging platform. Security researchers call ForcedEntry as most technically sophisticated hacking.

Apple fixed the flaws in late 2021, thus rendering both the software ineffective.

Apple has field a suit against NSO Group claiming that the company has violated user’s terms and conditions, and the suit is in its initial stages. NSO has denied any such wrongdoing.

Snooping companies sell the software to governments to protect them against national security threats. However, journalists and human right activists document the abuse of such software.

Design Thinking

Shabbir Chunawalla

Design thinking is a five step process which could be applied to any project. The first step is empathy for the user. After that the problem is defined. It is then ideated. A prototype is created. Last, the whole thing is tested. This is what is done subconsciously.

In the field of software, the first step is to understand how the customer interacts with the app, software or service. This understanding will lead to empathy — understanding user’s point of view. Problems will be anticipated before they arise. In empathy, one puts oneself in the shoes of another person.

Design thinking takes you away from linear thinking, and provides an alternative way of dealing with the problem. One can also think ahead of customers. One can simulate the customer’s or user’s journey and spot the points of friction.