The issue is whether the state has to be in the payments business. CBDCs amount to that. CBDCs are similar to stablecoins, rather than currencies. Money transfer is not the preserve of the government bodies. They have an undue advantage over the rest of the monetary system.

The Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve and the People’s Bank of China are contemplating on this. CBDCs are a response to private cryptos. However, it gives government access to personal data. The governments can slide into people’s bank accounts to resist the behaviour they do not approve of.

Central Banks could impose negative interest rates to erode people’s savings.

Many with no bank accounts and no interest connection could be left out of the financial system. Digital wallets are akin to government agencies being in e-commerce.

There is not much circulation of CBDCs to undermine existing system and there is not so little circulation that these become irrelevant. It demands certain administrative skills.

CBDCs are a slippery slope. They affect civil liberties and sneak into the market place. They disrupt the banking system. They are a solution without a problem.

Central banks exist as regulators. They need not participate in digital currency.

Generative AI models such as ChatGPT launched by OpenAI from Silicon Valley have been hailed as the beginning of a new era in Big Tech. Such new technologies lead to explosion of new companies. Already we have experienced this when Internet and cell phones have been introduced.

As we have observed, Generative AI churns virtually an ocean of data to bring forth original new content. Thus AI could be the next big thing.

ChatGPT provoked both microsoft and Google to renew their interest in projects that were more or less shelved.

ChatGPT could disrupt the existing manpower scene by displacing knowledge workers. In fact, it could change the way we make decisions, consume and learn.

The market valuations of AI companies have touched sky. Still, the investing companies are ready to put funds in them.

One such company apart from OpenAI is Kognitos, California, which works in automation of administrative tasks. Poly is working as a platform for designers producing 3D graphics or maps in a matter of seconds.

ChatGPT in fact is an example of gold rush since it minimises the need for a computer coder or designer to execute ideas.

Joseph Weizenbaum, an MIT professor, was perhaps the pioneer of the first chatbot called Eliza. It was named Eliza after a character in GBS’s play Pygmalion. The professor dismissed the idea that the machines would replace human intellect. Some experts, however, felt that chatbots would equal human beings in intelligence. Joseph was of the view that these are the tools. He was doubtful about computers’ comprehension of the natural language. It was then dependent on the context.

ChatGPT now challenges human creativity. There is a history of six decades which evolved the chatbots such as Siri of Apple, Now and Assistant of Google, Alexa of Amazon.

AI can automate certain tasks but it is unlikely to replace human creativity and critical thinking. In the creative process, the key aspects are imagination, emotions and personal experiences. They cannot be replicated by AI models.

Chatbots have travelled a long distance, from Eliza to ChatGPT. They would witness a rapid advancement now onwards. Perhaps, they could perform many tasks, which humans find difficult to perform. However, human touch is unique.

We could see some US restaurants offering dishes made out of lab grown meat on the menu. Lab grown meat is cultivated meat from a sample of cells collected from live stock. The cells are provided nutrition. They are grown in huge steel vessels called bioreactors. They are processed into something that resembles and tastes like real meat. This sector has raised nearly $2 billion in investments worldwide.

The lab grown meat could become a mass product once it reaches the shelves of supermarkets. The initial resistance of some consumers to try the lab grown meat must be overcome. Singapore is the only country so far which has approved lab grown meat for retail sale.

The US can follow suit. Its FDA has approved a chicken breast product grown by UPSIDE, a California-based foods company as safe for human consumption. UPSIDE expects to bring the product on restaurant menus by 2023, and on grocery stores by 2028.

UPSIDE has still to clear Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service hurdle by getting a sign off from it on its labels. GOOD Meat, another California-based firm has applied for approval to FDA. Mosa Meat and Believer of Meat from Netherlands too are discussing with the Agency.

UPSIDE facility can produce 4 lac pounds of cultivated a meat per annum. It is a small fraction of the 106 billion pounds of meat and poultry produced in the US in 2021.

Microsoft has announced a new version of its search engine, Bing by incorporating AI with Generative capabilities. Thus 8th February, 2023 is the day Microsoft opens up a race with its rivals. Apart from Bing, even Edge browser too will be revamped. Microsoft stakes its future on AI.

Alongside Bing’s search results, Microsoft is rolling out a chatbot that can summarise web pages, synthesize different sources, compose emails, translate the compositions in consumer hands.

If Microsoft gains one per cent point, it may lead to another $2 billion in ad revenues. Products such as cloud computing and collaboration tools would be positively affected.

Google’s Bard chatbot was given a prompt about the new discoveries from JWST which could be told to a 9-year old child. Its answer was inaccurate. It means Google must test its chatbot rigorously before putting it to use.

Of late, Microsoft released its Bing search engine which is AI-powered. It was in the first week of February, 2023 that Bing was paired with OpenAI’s Generative AI model. Instantly, more than a million people requested access, and the demand is growing by leaps and bounds.

The problematic area was the outright mistakes and inaccuracies the results produced. Users posted screenshots of inaccuracies produced by Bing. There were issues with open-ended chats. At times, it scolded the users and at times it called itself sentiment. It also chastised users when asked to provide false answers. Microsoft treats the issues as initial teething troubles and a part of the process to improve the product.

Several thousand users have shared positive feedback. It is still work-in-progress. The system will make mistakes in this preview period.

Companies are vying with each other to be ahead in chatbot race, after the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Microsoft has been an OpenAI investor for years. It has taken steps to incorporate ChatGPT into its Bing search engine.

Google does not want to be left behind in the race. Its chatbot Bard ‘seeks to combine the breadth of world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of their language models.’ Soon after the launch of the promotional video, the public came across an error in the chatbot’s answers. The event affected Google’s standing.

However, it is not Bard alone that Google is working on. It is also investing in Anthropic, a startup in AI. It has been founded by ex-employees of OpenAI. They feel the industry must beyond GPT-3.

Quora has announced its platform Open Exploration. It too is an AI-powered chatbot. There could be questions-and-answers and back-and-forth discussions. It is right now available for iOS phone, but will soon be available for Android devices too.

Wenxin Yiyan in Chinese and Earnie Bot in English is the China’s answer to ChatGPT. Ernie stands for Enhanced Representation Through Knowledge Integration. Alibaba from China too would like to introduce a ChatGPT-style chatbot.

India intends to make available the benefits of ChatGPT to Indian farming community in local languages. Ministry of Electronics and IT has a small team Bhashini that is building a WhatApp-based chatbot that is linked to ChatGPT. It can answer queries especially from farmers in rural areas. As farmers may not be able to type the query, they can send the query as voice mails or voice notes. There would be a voice -based response generated by ChatGPT.

There has to be a national digital public platform for Indian languages. It is the key for WhatsApp Chatbot. Under Bhasha Daan, voice data sets are crowdsourced in multiple Indian languages. The language processing models should be trained on as many Indian languages as possible.

In the test phase the model at present supports 12 Indian languages. WhatsApp has formidable number of users — 500 million. Even those who have least digital literacy know how to navigate it.

The chat can be a good source of information about government schemes in future, since at present the chatbot cannot access the real time information from Internet. The information available includes information till 2021.

ChatGPT of OpenAI has been the most downloaded app since its launch in the last week of November, 2022. GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer technology. It is a neural ML technology trained by using Internet data. It generates text and types it. A user just gives a prompt to elicit the answer to a question. In a jiffy, GPT generates a written response. It creates content that has language structure. No predecessors had this capability. Both MS and Google want to imbue their search engine with artificial intelligence — AI.

There are other GPT-based apps. One such app is Open Chat, headquartered in Vietnam, and released in December, 2022. In the same month, Chat God has been released. On Apple’s Store, AI+Chatbot has been launched in February, 2023.

Between January, 2023 and February, 2023, a host of such apps have been launched. Rapid ChatGPT is one such app. Then there is Chat AI GPT. Ask Me GPT is a South Korean app. There are some Indian startups too working in this space.

It is a moot point whether all these apps are backed by GPT technology as they claim. Some of these apps follow the subscription model. Some of them could let the malware sneak into your phone. It is difficult for Google Play to assess the apps on account of their open architecture. Apple Store finds it easy as it is a closed system.

All these app developers must produce a Bill of Material (BoM) for all the libraries that have gone into making of their software to convince about their genuine nature. There could be certification from companies such as ArmorCode.

ChatGPT and such generative AI models may disrupt the IT organisations and their access to talent. Top Indian IT organisations such as TCS, Infosys, Accenture have introduced workshops, training courses and learning modules to upskill employees in AI models. ChatGPT is a good fit when information and content is aggregated from multiple sources to address a specific issue contextually.

IT companies have previously worked with precursors of ChatGPT, i.e. GPT3. The present version is more capable and it is being explored by the IT staff. ChatGPT as a technology is based on language modelling, but could be weak in logical processing. The IT staff should understand its limitations.

Accenture has introduced Advanced NLP: Introduction to GPT digital course. There are courses such as open source BLOOM, BERT and ChatGPT. These help the employees write codes.

Infosys has made an investment in OpenAI in 2015. It conducts a virtual workshop in generative AI.