We are conducting a survey to better understand how organisations are approaching and using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

More specifically, we would like to get your perspective about the impact of AI technologies on your organisation’s people and processes as well as any desired outcomes/benefits you are aiming for and/or achieving with AI initiatives.

Your inputs will be helpful in creating a larger picture of AI adoption in India. Please share your inputs here.

1

Study: Analytics and Data Science Jobs in India: June 2021

Around 137,870 open jobs are available right now in India in the space of Analytics & data science. The demand for analytics talent is currently the highest ever seen in India.

Some key insights are:
1. The analytics jobs figure for June 2021 witnessed a 67.0% increase in open jobs requirement compared to the same period last year (June 2020).
2. There was a drop or contraction in open jobs year-on-year in the months of June and July 2020 – 10.6% and 17.5%, respectively. This contraction is due to the recessionary environment that was caused by the unfortunate pandemic. 
3. However, after June, the analytics job market took a U-turn once India started lifting its lockdown restrictions from June 2020.
4. In June 2021, India contributed to 9.4% of the total global analytics job openings. This is a significant jump from 7.2% of total global job openings in January 2020.

2

How Indian Tech Industry Is Planning Return To Work Post Covid

To call or not to call employees back to work was the biggest dilemma Indian organisations faced after the lockdown lifted last year. Many founders, leaders and HR heads in India are looking forward to safely opening up offices as soon as possible.  
A lot of employees have been able to adapt to work from home without hurting productivity. However, not just the leaders, surprisingly, many employees also want to be back in the office, according to the founders. People prefer working from the office for personal and professional reasons.

3

Google Releases Largest Dataset Mapping Human Brain

Google, in collaboration with the Lichtman laboratory at Harvard University and Connectomics, is releasing the “H01” dataset accompanied by a companion paper that contains a 1.4-petabyte sample of human brain tissue.

The dataset contains approximately one cubic millimetre of imaging data, including tens of thousands of rebuilt neurons, millions of neuron fragments, 183 million annotated synapses, 100 proofread cells, and numerous more subcellular annotations and structures.

In terms of the area covered, the H01 sample is the largest in scale and the first to comprehensively include all layers of the human cortex and different cell types. The principal aim of this project is to provide a new, book-length resource for brain research to study the brain and to further the field of connectomics. 

The implications of something like this is immense.

4

Featured Video | Tredence Unplugged: Finding The North Star In Your Data Science Career

5

Everything Wrong With The Paper Review Process Of Reputed ML Conferences

Last year, a PhD candidate Huixian Chen from the University of Florida took his life alleging ‘academic dishonesty’ amongst his peers, especially his doctoral advisor, who also happens to be the external reviewer at one of the prestigious conferences.

Researchers making a racket about the paper review process have become a common sight at academic conferences. The old chestnuts being: How do reviewers judge the novelty of a paper? How did a similar work get better reviews? Given the low acceptance rates and highly coveted conferences, the researchers can be incentivised to pursue unethical practices. The situation got so bad that the Association for Computing Machinery(ACM) had to make a statement. 

6

Hands-on Guides for ML Developers

+ Python Guide to Precision-Recall Tradeoff

+ Guide to Multi-Class Classification

+ A Beginner's Guide to GPT Neo (With Python Codes)

+ Understanding Overfitting and Underfitting for Data Science

+ Guide to YAMNet : Sound Event Classifier

7

PEOPLE & STARTUPS

+ Interview With Ingo Alzner, AI At Porsche

+ Dr Prithwis Mukerjee's Chrono-Series: A Heady Mix Of Advaita Philosophy, Time Travel & Anthropomorphism Of AI

+ This EV Financing Startup Uses AI To Help Auto-Rickshaw Drivers Switch To Electric Three Wheelers

8

Apple’s Coveted M1 Chip Has A Serious Flaw

Apple’s M1 hype has finally started to lose steam. According to reports, M1 chips were recently found to have a bug that would enable any two applications running under the operating system to covertly exchange data without using regular features such as memory, sockets or files.  

The bug has been named M1RACLEs (short for M1ssing Register Access Controls Leak EL0 State). The bug violates Apple’s OS’ security models, which are not supposed to send data from one process to another secretly.

9

Google’s Vertex AI

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has introduced Vertex AI, a managed machine learning platform for deploying and maintaining AI models, during his keynote speech at the recently concluded Google I/O conference.

The new platform brings AutoML and AI Platform together into a unified API, client library and user interface.

10

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS

Here's what all happened last week.

+ National Stock Exchange Launches Advanced Certification Program In AI

+ IIT Kanpur To Set Up Centre of Excellence In Artificial Intelligence At Noida Campus

+ India Ranks 67th Globally In Data Skills: Coursera Report

+ ISRO Offers A Five-Day Machine Learning Course For Free

+ Tredence Inc. Appoints Harish Gudi As New COO