Are OTT channels having free ride atop the infrastructure created and paid for by telcos? Telcos want OTT firms to part with a portion of their revenue for using their platform. OTT channels have not to acquire spectrum at a price. Telcos have revenue outgo, as they spend for spectrum and license fees, and for building the infrastructure.

The counter-agreement from OTT channels is that OTT content drives the data usage of the telcos. It generates substantial ARPUs or average revenue per user per month. They feel that telcos must pay OTTs in return for higher data traffic across telecom networks.

A distinction can be made between content OTTs and communication OTTs. Communication OTTs compete with telecom carrier. Thus there could be a case for revenue sharing.

Such communication OTTs are Zoom, MS Teams and Google Meet.

In the absence of high tariffs in India, it is natural for telcos to demand some revenue sharing from OTTs, at least the communication OTTs.

The issue has engaged the TRAI and DoT for the last many years.

There is an apprehension that insistence of payment to telcos should not cross the clearly drawn net neutrality line. In a month’s time, say by January, 2023, a revised Telecom Draft is likely to be out. It is likely to state that its aim is to regulate only communication apps. It will remove the ambiguity. The streaming platforms and food aggregators are likely to be excluded from regulation.

The Government is considering to make social media and internet companies accountable for the kind of alogrithms they use to customrise the content after analyzing browsing history and profile of the users.

India could be the first few countries where the proprietary code could be subjected to legal oversight. The proposal could become a part of the Digital India Act. There could be provisions in the draft about governing the use of new age technologies such as AI, quantum computing and metaverse.

The intent is the prevention of the misuse of the data. The advanced algorithms could become the tools for misuse irrespective of the fact whether the data is stored locally or abroad.

It is proposed that a user will not be identified specifically from an anonymized dataset.

The proposals will be sent to the law ministry for review. The old IT Act will be replaced.

Social media will be asked to specify how they use the data collected. Such requests are to be backed by the law enforcement agencies through court orders Generally, Facebook and Twitter use news feeds based on location and interests. The algorithms could analyze swathes of data to create individual profiles. Here the browsing history, shopping history and demographic data is taken into account.

A woman scientist, Dr. Spiropulu and her colleagues simulated a pair of blackholes in a quantum computer, and sent a message through a wormhole, a short-cut in space and time.

As we know, at the macro level, gravity shapes the universe. At the micro-level of sub-atomic particles, however, quantum mechanics governs the realm. The experiment of Dr. Spiropulu is small attempt to understand the relationship between gravity and quantum mechanics.

The wormhole dynamics is made traversable in the experiment. The tunnel of wormhole created by the researchers is not in real physical space. It is in an emergent 2-D space. The blackholes are not real, but are lines of code in a quantum computer. It is just a toy model of the universe. It is akin to a hologram with quantum fields on space-time on the edges, deciding what happens inside. It is a way of analysing quantum phenomena using general relativity.

Wormholes are a hypothetical connection between widely separated regions of space-time. The word was coined in 1935. In General Theory of Relativity, matter and energy warp space to create gravity. Einstein and Rosen predicted short-cuts through space-time could exist — these are wormholes which connect pairs of blackholes.

Einstein and Rosen spoke in 1935 of a hypothetical tunnel-like structure called Einstein-Rosen bridge or a wormhole, which could potentially connect to distinct points in space-time.

It was also observed by Einstein, Rogen and Boris in 1935 that quantum mechanics was chancy. Einstein spoke of a ‘spooky action at a distance’. If one of a pair of particles is measured, it amounts to measuring the other particle, even if that is miles apart. It was thought incredible. Physicists call this entanglement. Juan in 2013 called entanglement and wormholes two sides of the same coin. The entangled particles were connected by wormholes. Einstein general relativity maths was employed to examine an aspect of quantum magic. It is called quantum teleportation.

In quantum teleportation, physicists send information between two particles entangled in a pair either near or miles apart. The physicists do not know the message. This technology would pave the way for quantum internet.

The buzz has originated in the US from a research finding by a team of particle physicists claiming a kind of teleportation of quantum states within a quantum computer.

In classical physics, there is no negative energy. In quantum theory, there can be negative energy which generates antigravitational effect. Virtual particles flit in and out of existence, making use of energy derived from empty space. These can enter a blackhole carrying a debt in the form an energy, which the blackhole has to pay back. Stephen Hawking calculated this small leak in 1974. It causes the blackhole to lose energy and shrink.

The wormhole magic was recreated by Dr Spiropulu on a quantum computer. IBM researchers in quantum computing work towards adding more capacity or qubits while engineers figure out how to stabilise these systems for error corrections and other practical issues.

There is a programming interface like IBM Qiskit available over the cloud to interact with the emerging systems and to explore potential applications.

In India, we would like to focus on quantum computing, quantum communications and related sensing technologies and material science. It is complex to develop quantum technology skills. An IIT-Madras study with a Poland team focused on adapting and proposing a quantum logic-based solution similar to the old unsolvable problem of 36 officers originally put forward by Euler.

The quantum concepts of superposition and entanglement could be applied to problem solving. This practice must be initiated early in students careers to bridge the gap between physics and computing. There are unresolved questions of physics, information, logic and computing. Young minds must be encouraged to advance the frontiers of this emerging technology.

VFX, as we know, stands for special effects. Of late Indian movies have seen superb VFX in movies like Brahmastra. Avengers: End Game had 2400 VFX shots, whereas Brahmastra Part 1: Shiva had 4500 VFX shots.

Anil Kapoor’s Mr. India had some effects to make him invisible in 1987. It helped the storyline. Sri Devi fell in love with him. Peter Pereira worked on the special effects here. Mostly these were mechanical and were photographic tricks. A decade later in 2002, Jaani Dushman had special effects which were substandard. The TV serials of Ramayana, Mahabharat and Shaktiman too had limited special effects. Even recent films Half Girlfriend and Mohenjo Daro and Kalank had special effects which were caricature-like. Shraddha Kapoor’s Nagin trilogy will have VFX.

The real transition in special effects in India came with Koi Mil Gaya in 2003 and Krrish series of Rakesh Roshan. Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies did VFX for Krrish 3 and Krrish 4 will have world-class VFX.

Between 1980 and early 2000, Bollywood had excellent VFX films, e.g. Terminator (1984), Terminator 2, Aliens, Star Trek, Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

In India, the recently released film of Varun Dhavan Bhediaya has good VFX. VFX has growh in scale and size in Indian film industry in the last 15 years. Films such as Ra.One (2011), Krrish 3, Fan, Zero, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, Shershaah and Brahmastra are exampless.

The Government too wants to promote AVGC or animation, visual effects, gaming and comics.

VFX is an expensive technology. The cost varies as per the film’s scale and budget. In some films, it accounts for 30-40 per cent of the budget. Though scale matters, VFX can be made a part of small films.

Silicon valley so far was enthusiastic about cryptos and metaverse. The new term that has taken the Valley by storm is Generative AI.

In October 2022, a party was thrown by a startup — Stability AI. The venue was San Francisco Exploratorium. This startup has developed an image-generating algorithm called StableDiffusion. It has created most buzz in recent times. It is open source and free to use. Anyone can view the code and download it. More than 2 lac people downloaded it since it was released in August 2022. Many luminaries attended the event.

As we know, generative AI does not just analyse existing data but creates new text, images, videos, code snippets and more. Generative AI apps turn text prompts into images.

Dall-E-2, the image generator that OpenAI released has 1.5 million users everyday. Midjourney, another AI image generator has 3 million plus users. Google and Meta have built their own image generators.

There is Jasper, a year old, AI copywriting app. Generative AI could be applied to areas such as gaming and advertising.

The safest things is to have generative AI publicly available. It should be governed by the communities and not by Big Tech. One can interrogate the data sets, the model and the code of StableDiffusion and other software being developed.

OpenAI has introduced an AI-assisted novel Chatbot which has created buzz on the Internet. When developed further, it can assist in play writing and essay writing. It is called ChatGPT. It is in demand. OpenAI’s GPT-3 software is predictive about what should follow the text you type. At the beginning of 2022, the second version of DALE-E model demonstrated its ability to create images with photo-realism from the submissions of the users.

OpenAI has been co-founded by Musk and Altaman with other investors to develop AI that furthers the cause of humanity.

Chatbot technology has been in vogue since long, but its deployment has shown mixed results. Tay, from Microsoft, was removed in 2016 after it learnt to convey sexist, racist and offensive remarks.

Developers are aware that the model sometimes writes non-sensical or incorrect answers, e.g., it states 10 kg of cotton is heavier than 10 kg of iron.

Alan Turing recognised that machines can mimic intelligence. He devised an experiment called the Turing Test or the Imitation Game. It set a standard for machines to be called intelligent. Turing Test expected to spot an artificially intelligent machine trying to slip through as human. Since then the advances have grown by leaps and bounds. Today all are talking about OpenAI’s ChatGPT or generative pre-trained transformer. It performs cogntive tasks in seconds with aplomb. It is in beta stage.

ChatGPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer. Its early users treat it as a mix of software and sorcery. In past, Chatbots failed when they were taken outside their comfort zone. In that context, ChatGPT is different, smarter and weirder. It uses the technology GPT-3.5, an upgraded version of GPT-3. It was initiated in 2020. ChatGPT is good at spotting and fixing the errors committed by programmers. It responds well to open-ended analytical questions. It may put an end to the monotonous homework.

ChatGPT makes probabilistic guesses relating to the relevant text bits in a sequence based on a statistical model trained on billions of examples of text derived from the whole of internet. It makes it inclined to answer wrongly even for simple math problems.

ChatGPT does not use crawlers like Google to keep it updated for current events. Its knowledge is restricted to events prior to 2021.Therefore, some of its answers are not up-to-date. It has learnt from opinions too. It is difficult to extract a strong opinion from it unless coaxed hard.

OpenAI has taken steps to avoid sexist, racist kind of comments which were gushed out from the other Chatbots.

Its future implications are too difficult to guess. At present it is a nifty tool very helpful in academics, customer service and to crack funny jokes. AI-assisted Chatbots were fiction just a few short years ago. With the advent of ChatGPT, the world has realised the potential of the intelligent software. ChatGPT has earned admiration of the scientists, artists, writers-poets, traders, programmers and travellers. All of these categories of professionals have tinkered with it. ChatGPT generates unique content, makes predictions and provides valuable insights. It takes ordinary productivity and creativity to extra-ordinary levels.

News business generates ad revenue of Rs.3000-4000 crore which accounts for 5 per cent of the broadcast business. There are 400 plus news channels which vie for this stagnant amount. Hindi news has the highest viewership — 667 million viewers. It compares well with 457 million people watching news on Internet, and 421 million people who read a newspaper. We find a lot of duplication among the audience of TV news, internet news and print news. Advertising rates on news media are 30 per cent less than those on a GEC — or general entertainment channel. That explains the theatrics of the anchors and sensationalisation of the content to capture the eyeballs.

Out of digital advertising of Rs.30000 plus crore, Google and Meta take away the bulk of revenue. It leaves just a few thousand crore for dozens of newspapers, websites and TV. Online news is consumed on India Today, NDTV or The Indian Express. Subscription revenues are poor.

TV Today Network has 4 news channels. NDTV runs 5 news channels. ABP runs 8 news channels. Zee runs 19 news channels. Network 18 of Reliance runs 20 news channels. Times Network runs 5 news channels. TV 9 runs 6 news channels. ARG Outlier runs 3 news channels. The viewership share of top news channels is between 0.2 to 0.3 per cent.

News demands fresh investment in feet-on-the ground journalism. It should employ technologies such as AI. Corporates buy news channels for the glamour of being in news. Some want to be influencers.

2022 happens to be a bitter year for cryptos — major brands such as FTX, Celsius, Voyager and Blockfi have filed for bankruptcy. There is crypto crash too. Despite all this, almost 5000 new crypto currencies have emerged in 2022. At the beginning of 2022, there were 16000 plus cryptos on CoinMarketCap.com. At the beginning of November 2022, there are 21000 plus crypto coins featured there. It is an addition of 5000 new cryptos.

Bitcoin emerged in 2009 — almost 13 years ago. It proved to be a viable alternative digital payment system. Thus many ‘altcoins’ emerged, such as Litecoin. There is open-source software to create the code underlying each crypto. It is a blockchain project.

The use of Cloud services is increasing. With the wide-spread use of cloud, it has become imperative for the organisations to ensure that the apps they develop are cloud native.

Cloud native is that software that is designed from scratch to avail of the cloud computing infrastructure which offers flexibility, scale, resilience and elasticity. Such an architecture is standards-based. It is also vendor neutral. It enables this software to work over any number of hardware pieces and cloud configurations.

It requires adaptation on the part of IT companies to develop cloud native apps. Such manpower engaged in native apps must have different skill sets. They must be well-versed in cloud and data-based architecture and security aspects.

Cloud native is a tectonic change and there should a lot of readjustment in the architecture patterns and the working style of the development teams to deliver efficiently. Less emphasis is on hard-coding to accelerate things. Low-code plays a vital part in the cloud native shift. Low-code accelerates the software development. There is abstraction and automation in the development process. It generates enhanced productivity. It obviates the need to have specialised hard-code skills and thus to spot such manpower in short supply. Low-code works with drag-and-drop functions and in-built user interfaces. There is rapid development of full-stack as low-code has models for business processes, logic and data models. There are cross-platform apps, APIs and connectors easy implement and integrate with third-party tools. Time is saved. Low-code platform approach allows the business to develop, integrate and test software quickly.

The maxim of ‘fail fast, fix fast’ can be used to spot the issues and solve them quickly.

In digital transformation initiatives, cloud native approach plays an essential role.

According to author Handel Jones, the five areas where AI is bringing about revolutionary changes are warfare, healthcare, cars, VR and wireless. The US companies must take AI seriously, and the political system must support AI. The companies focus on short term profits at the cost long term R&D and technology development. The typical shareholder holds the shares for less than a year, and has no stake in company’s long term strategy. The quarterly stock performance matters more for corporate leadership. They are averse to taking long term bets on AI.

The Chinese government proactively promotes AI and funds the research efforts. China wants to show its supremacy to the world.