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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been dominating the headlines for its triumphs, and also fears being expressed by many including some of the best minds in AI.
The Association for Computing Machinery released a statement in October 2022 on ‘Principles for Responsible Algorithmic Systems’, a broader class of systems that include AI systems.
Several leading AI experts and thinkers have been part of different cautionary messages about AI, issued by the Future of Life Institute, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Center for AI Safety. There is deep concern about AI among many who know it.
AI systems are capable of exhibiting superhuman performance on specific or “narrow” tasks, which has made it to the news in the field of chess, Go (a game several orders harder than chess) and also in biochemistry for protein folding.
The performance and utility of AI systems improve as the task is narrowed, making them valuable assistants to humans. Speech recognition, translation, and even identifying common objects such as photographs, are just a few tasks that AI systems tackle today, even exceeding human performance in some instances.
Their performance and utility degrade on more “general” or ill-defined tasks. They are weak in integrating inferences across situations based on the common sense humans have.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) refers to intelligence that is not limited or narrow. Think of it as human “common sense” but absent in AI systems.
Common sense will make a human save his life in a life-threatening situation while a robot may remain unmoved. There are no credible efforts towards building AGI yet. Many experts believe AGI will never be achieved by a machine; others believe it could be in the far future.
A big moment for AI was the release of ChatGPT, in November 2022. ChatGPT is a generative AI tool that uses a Large Language Model (LLM) to generate text.
LLMs are large artificial neural networks that ingest large amounts of digital text to build a statistical “model”. Several LLMs have been built by Google, Meta, Amazon, and others.
Jumpstarting the next phase of U.S.-India defence ties (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Over the last few years, there has been incredible momentum in U.S.-India ties, driven primarily by their defence relationship. United States Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin travelled to India from June 4-5 to reinforce the major defence partnership and advance cooperation in critical domains.
Noticeably, his visit secured an agreement on a road map for defence industrial cooperation, announced as part of the U.S.-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) agreement (announced in May 2022) and which had its inaugural meeting in January this year.
The road map envisages boosting defence manufacturing in India through greater technological cooperation. While the objectives complement India’s own self-reliance mission and its desire to lessen import dependence, it potentially repositions the U.S. in the broader context of the U.S.-India strategic relationship.
The visit’s objective had two important legs: technological innovation and growing military cooperation. One of the most important steps taken during the visit was towards strengthening the bilateral defence relationship by creating a road map to promote collaboration in the defence industry.
The road map aims to expedite crucial co-development and co-production initiatives, fostering stronger connections between the defence sectors of the two countries.
There was the launch of a new initiative, Indus-X, which is to provide a new impetus to the defence innovation engagement between the two countries.
This builds on the U.S.-India bilateral Space Situational Awareness arrangement signed in 2022, which promises to enhance information-sharing and cooperation in the space sector. Furthermore, new areas in defence space exchanges have been identified based on the cooperation between the U.S. Space Command and India’s Defence Space Agency.
India’s ‘Major Defence Partner’ (MDP) status along with the four foundational agreements signed with the U.S. now allow for the sharing of technology and more frequent cooperation.
These have not only allowed the sharing of sensitive technologies without India having to become an ally but have also proved to be effective mechanisms to prevent backsliding due to procedural difficulties or structural differences.
Opinion
Is the Indian Railways stretched beyond its capacity? (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Infrastructure)
On June 2, an accident involving three trains took place in Balasore district of Odisha. It claimed 288 lives and left more 1,200 people injured.
The tragedy has left several questions in its wake about safety, signalling, and overcrowding. When maintenance works of the Railways are undertaken, automatic signalling is stopped and there is manual takeover of the system.
In 2015, inspecting officials found that station masters and signal maintainers could cite safety literature, but were unable to answer questions on it.
They found that mock drills had not been conducted at all points, safety clamps had not been greased, and locks and keys had not been numbered properly.
Regarding inspections and shortcomings, the Railways system is vast. Inspections are regularly carried out by supervisors and officers, training is regularly done, and feedback is also regularly obtained.
Some of these things that you cited happen because of lack of sincerity of the staff. But such incidents are not regular occurrences.
Otherwise, we cannot operate 20,000 trains daily on 7,000 or 8,000 stations. Most trains are punctual and run properly. There is some slack, yes, but not to a large extent.
There have been such incidents, but these do not mean there is laxity and lack of safety overall. These are instances which point to how systems need to be improved in those particular areas as and when they are noticed.
Of course, you can’t ever do enough as far as safety is concerned. Although the safety record of the Railways has been improving drastically over the years, this accident has cast a big shadow on our record.
There is a need to look at the safety systems afresh. And the culture safety rules supreme. Punctuality and other aspects of the Railways have to be built into it.
Explainer
Is the ranking system of colleges flawed? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Education)
In a country as diverse as India, ranking universities and institutions is not an easy task. The Ministry of Education established the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2016 to determine the critical indicators in which institutions’ performance could be measured.
Since then, institutions nationwide, including universities and colleges, eagerly await their standings in this nationally recognised system every year.
Currently, the NIRF releases rankings across various categories: ‘Overall’, ‘Research Institutions’, ‘Universities’, and ‘Colleges’, and specific disciplines like engineering, management, pharmacy, law, etc.
The rankings are an important resource for prospective students navigating the labyrinth of higher education institutions in India.
NIRF ranks institutes by their total score and it uses five indicators to determine this score — ‘Teaching, Learning & Resources’ (30% weightage); ‘Research and Professional Practice’ (30%); ‘Graduation Outcomes’ (20%); ‘Outreach and Inclusivity’ (10%); and ‘Perception’ (10%).
Academic communities have had concerns about the construction of these indicators, the transparency of the methods used, and the overall framework.
An important part of it is focused on the research and professional practices part of the evaluation because they pay a lot of attention to bibliometric measures.
Bibliometrics refers to the measurable aspects of research, such as the number of papers published, the number of times they are cited, and the impact factors of journals.
The allure of bibliometrics as a tool for assessing research output lies in its efficiency and convenience compared to qualitative assessments performed by subject experts, which are more resource-intensive and require time.
However, science policy experts have cautioned authorities against relying too much on bibliometrics as a complete assessment.
They argued that bibliometric indicators don’t fully capture the intricacies of scientific performance, and that we need a more comprehensive evaluation methodology.
Are non-communicable diseases increasing in India? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
The new national estimates for diabetes and other non-communicable diseases (NCD) shows that 31 million more Indians became diabetic in four years (2019-2021).
In 2021, a study found that India has 101 million people with diabetes and 136 million people with prediabetes. Additionally, 315 million people had high blood pressure; 254 million had generalised obesity, and 351 million had abdominal obesity.
213 million people had hypercholesterolaemia (wherein fat collects in arteries and puts individuals at greater risk of heart attack and strokes) and 185 million had high low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.
The decade-long nationwide study was funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research and Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and co-ordinated by the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation. The results of the study are to be published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology journal.
The study is the first comprehensive epidemiological research paper which includes participants from 31 States and some Union Territories, with a large sample size of 1,13,043 individuals. There are two big trend indicators in the study.
First, diabetes and other metabolic non-communicable diseases, such as hypertension, obesity and dyslipidemia are much more common than estimated previously in India and second, while currently urban regions had higher rates of all metabolic NCDs than rural areas, with the exception of prediabetes, rural India will see a diabetes explosion in the next five years if left unregulated.
The study also highlights interstate and inter-regional variations. The highest diabetes prevalence was found in Goa , Puducherry and Kerala.
While prediabetes was prevalent in Sikkim, hypertension was highest in Punjab. Generalised obesity and abdominal obesity were highest in Puducherry, while Kerala had high hypercholesterolemia and high LDL cholestrol.
News
India to buy 31 MQ-9 Reaper UAVs; announcement during PM’s U.S. trip (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the U.S., the Defence Acquisition Council on Thursday approved the procurement of 31 armed MQ-9 Reaper Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from General Atomics, defence sources confirmed.
The deal is now awaiting final approval from the Cabinet Committee on Security and is expected to be announced during next week’s visit.
The long-pending proposal to buy the high-altitude long-endurance armed UAVs was on the agenda of the council, which is chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
They also confirmed that the council approved the deal, which will be executed through the Foreign Military Sales route of the U.S. government.
Of the 31 UAVs to be procured, 15 are meant for the Navy and eight each for the Army and Air Force. The total cost, estimated at more than $3 billion, also includes those for maintenance, overhaul and repair of the platforms.
Earlier, the plan was to buy 30 UAVs, with 10 for each service. However, the Navy has the most pressing requirement for these platforms, which will significantly enhance its maritime surveillance capability over the Indian Ocean Region while reducing the stress on the P-8I maritime patrol aircraft.
In December, Navy chief Admiral R. Hari Kumar had said that the deal was in progress and at a stage “where we are discussing if numbers need to be rationalised or kept as it is”.
The Navy leased two MQ-9As in 2020, and have since extended that lease. In November 2022, General Atomics announced that these leased UAVs had completed 10,000 flight hours in two years since their maiden flight on November 21, 2020, and have helped the Navy to cover over 14 million square miles of operating area.
BIMSTEC to adopt Bangkok Vision 2030 at next summit (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) summit at end of this year will adopt Bangkok Vision 2030, according to Saurabh Kumar, Secretary (East) in the Ministry of External Affairs.
He also stated that a marine transport cooperation agreement is expected to be concluded at the summit. He said that the Bangkok Vision 2030 would be an overarching kind of document and would give direction to the organisation.
Thailand has put forth the Bangkok Vision 2030 which seeks to propel BIMSETC towards a region that is prosperous, resilient and open, moving us in a forward-looking trajectory for sustainable and balanced growth. He was speaking at an event “BIMSTEC – the way forward” organised by India Foundation.
Towards this, an eminent group of persons has been introduced for monitoring progress in all seven sectors. Thailand as the current chair has worked closely with member-states to prepare them for the future by trying to strengthen on three aspects.
The first way is by enhancing regional inter-connectedness, involvement of all stakeholders and promoting BIMSTEC’s internal strength.