One Thing Today in Tech
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Agentic AI: Unpacking the hype cycle, challenges, and opportunities
In this episode, Sidu Ponnappa, co-founder and CEO of Realfast, unpacks the hype cycle, challenges and opportunities in 'agentic AI.' Realfast, a Singapore and Bengaluru startup, recently out of stealth mode, is initially offering AI assistants to Salesforce implementation services teams. Ponnappa also talks about the intangible human experience that's often discounted in conversations about AI, and offers his personal guesstimate on when we might see agents autonomously capable of building their own agents
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Quad Summit: Cancer Moonshot and other science and tech initiatives announced
The leaders of the Quad nations, Prime Ministers Narendra Modi of India, Anthony Albanese of Australia, and Kishida Fumio of Japan, and US President Joe Biden unveiled the Quad Cancer Moonshot, a collaborative effort in the Indo-Pacific region, in a statement called The Wilmington Declaration, on Sep. 21. This partnership will initially focus on cervical cancer, which the leaders note is a preventable disease that continues to affect many. The leaders also announced greater collaboration in critical technologies
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AR glasses: Will enterprise applications help advance the technology?
Is the enterprise opportunity on the rise in the world of augmented reality, or AR? Just this week, Microsoft, maker of HoloLens, has announced a partnership with Anduril, the US deep-tech defence startup founded by Palmer Luckey, the inventor of the Oculus headset, now part of Meta, and Snap has released the latest version of its AR Spectacles. To understand the landscape better, we speak with Milind Manoj, co-founder and CEO of Pupilmesh, a head-mounted display systems deep-tech startup that's part of MapMyIndia
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Outsourcing generative AI projects: how satisfied are enterprise customers?
How satisfied are enterprise customers with the results of their outsourcing investments when it comes to generative AI? Mrinal Rai, assistant director and principal analyst at ISG, unpacks what the technology sourcing and advisory company's customers are saying about this. Rai, who leads research for the future of work and enterprise customer experience at ISG, adds that irrespective of current challenges, and less-than-satisfactory results in some specific areas, large businesses plan to keep up their AI investments
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Microsoft announces new AI features and agents in Copilot
Microsoft has unveiled new AI features in its Copilot product. The features started rolling out this week and Microsoft also announced a large deal with Vodafone Group under which 68,000 or about two-thirds of the British mobile services provider's employees will get licensed access to the new Copilot. Among the features are Copilot Pages, deeper integration of Copilot within Microsoft's Office products, and Copilot agents, which will automate a growing number of business processes
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Nakul Aggarwal on BrowserStack's latest acquisition on journey to testing platform
In today's episode, we bring you an update from Nakul Aggarwal, co-founder and CTO of BrowserStack, a leading SaaS company from India, providing software app and browser testing infrastructure and products. Aggarwal talks about the rationale behind the acquisition of Bird Eats Bug, in Berlin, which BrowserStack announced yesterday. He also talks about evaluating building BrowserStack's own large language model, as the SaaS company progresses on its journey of transforming from a test infrastructure provider to a testing platform
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All eyes on Nvidia's Q2 earnings: A primer on the AI chipmaker's dominance
Ahead of Nvidia's fiscal Q2 earnings results, on Aug. 28 (Aug. 29 2:30 a.m. local time in India) we look at the stunning rise of the $2 trillion chip maker as the tech backbone for the explosion of generative AI over the last two years. Alvin Nguyen, senior analyst at Forrester Research, and Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Technology Market Research, explain Nvidia's dominance and the growing complexities in the broader ecosystem
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Is Apple + OpenAI expedient or the best of both worlds?
Apple, as widely anticipated leading up to its annual Worldwide Developer Conference, announced a partnership with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to the iPhone, iPad and MacBooks. The tie up evoked strident criticism from Elon Musk, the world's richest person, in particular around data privacy. In this episode, Jaspreet Bindra, an independent AI and ethics researcher and former chief digital officer of the Mahindra Group, and Dipanjan Chatterjee, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research, unpack the significance of this deal
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WWDC: How will Apple balance its privacy stance with AI features
Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference, WWDC, kicks off later today, and anticipation is high with respect to the iPhone maker's AI roadmap, as it is generally considered to lag Android rivals such as Samsung and Google — especially in the era of generative AI. Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Technology Market Research, and Navkendar Singh, associate vice president at IDC India, unpack what they are expecting to see today from Apple's conference
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Expansion to exit: There's a new wave of global capability centres in India
Access to talent, value and innovation - these are all reasons that multinational companies are either setting up IT and software-driven R&D centres in India or expanding existing facilities. Some, however, are reducing the workforce in such centres and there's also a set of companies considering exiting their GCCs altogether. To understand what's going on, I spoke with Stanton Jones, Distinguished Analyst at ISG, a technology research and advisory firm that tracks outsourcing deals around the world, about their recent survey of GCC activity. Here's what he said
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Election results: Why the global CEO will remain gung-ho about India's tech services
In this episode, Megha Chawla, senior partner at the multinational consultancy Bain & Company, talks about why India's tech talent has become a non-negotiable part of the global CEO's strategy, discussing the prospects for the nation's tech landscape, as India returns to a coalition government at the centre after a decade. In the age of AI, India's IT services companies have become important partners to global businesses, she says