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05/06/2025

India's Great Unlock to an $8T Economy

The “Great Unlock India 2035” vision document outlines a pathway for India to achieve an $8 trillion economy by 2035. It emphasizes the need for sustained growth through technology, entrepreneurship, capital, and formalization. While acknowledging existing on-ramps like digital identity and transactions, it identifies challenges like income inequality and lack of formalization. To address these, the document proposes leveraging digital public infrastructure (DPI) and AI to reach the next billion Indians. This involves developing AI models in Indic languages, reducing costs, and promoting open-source models. The goal is to empower farmers, students, and small businesses through technology, unlocking growth and capital. India aims to achieve an $8 trillion economy by 2030 through four key unlocks: technology, capital, entrepreneurship, and formalization. This involves accelerating capital flow, prioritizing AI for a billion Indians, pursuing land monetization, and deregulating and improving access to credit and markets. The success of this vision depends on these factors and addressing income disparity and the informal sector. Further thought is needed on unknown unknowns.

20 min
04/23/2025

Duolingo to Teach Chess

Duolingo is expanding beyond language lessons to include chess, aiming to make the game more accessible to beginners. The lessons will start with basic piece movements and progress to tactics and strategies through interactive puzzles and mini-matches against AI characters. While initially limited to iOS and solo play, Duolingo plans to expand the feature and allow player-to-player matches in the future. Duolingo is launching chess lessons in April 2025, starting with a limited iOS beta in English. The lessons aim to make chess more accessible and engaging for beginners, utilizing Duolingo’s gamified approach. Reactions to the news are mixed, with some excitement and skepticism about the need for a new chess learning platform.

12 min
04/22/2025

Prompt Engineering Techniques

Prompt engineering for large language models like Gemini. It covers configuring output settings like token limits, sampling controls, and prompting techniques. The goal is to craft prompts and settings that guide the AI to consistently produce desired outputs. Several techniques improve LLM performance, including few-shot learning, system prompting, step-back prompting, chain-of-thought reasoning, self-consistency, tree-of-thought reasoning, and REACT. These techniques enhance accuracy, creativity, and reliability by providing context, guiding reasoning, and enabling external tool use. Prompt engineering is an iterative process of experimenting, learning, and refining prompts. Best practices include providing examples, keeping prompts simple and specific, using instructions over constraints, and documenting the process. Techniques like chain-of-thought, self-consistency, and REACT enhance LLM reasoning and problem-solving. Effective communication with AI tools involves understanding building blocks and experimenting. Further resources, including Google’s prompting guides and research papers, are available for those interested in exploring this field.

26 min
04/18/2025

Guide to Building Agents

Agents, powered by large language models (LLMs), are independent digital assistants that can perform tasks using LLMs for reasoning and decision-making, and external tools for information gathering and action. They excel at complex decision-making, difficult-to-maintain rules, and unstructured data. A guide to building AI agents suggests starting with a high-performing model to establish a baseline, then experimenting with smaller, faster models for cost and speed optimization. It outlines three foundational components: models, tools, and instructions. Standardizing tools for reusability and manageability is crucial, and best practices for writing effective instructions, including leveraging existing documentation and anticipating edge cases, are provided. Agents, powered by LLMs and external tools, automate complex workflows within safety boundaries set by guardrails, which can be LLM-based, rules-based, or external moderation APIs. Human oversight is crucial, especially during initial deployment, to catch unexpected failures and continuously refine the agent’s performance.

23 min
04/01/2025

Personal Manufacturing Hub

The Bamboo Lab H2D is an all-in-one personal manufacturing hub integrating professional-grade 3D printing, laser engraving, cutting, and digital cutting and plotting. It features a dual-nozzle 3D printer, heated chamber, and vision-based alignment system for precise laser work. The H2D offers two laser power options, contactless 3D mesh engraving, and an optional rotary attachment for personalized engraving. The H2D 3D printer has a digital cutting and pen drawing feature for precise vinyl cuts. It also includes a print-then-cut feature with an AI camera. Enhanced precision and reliability are achieved with a Vision-assisted encoder system, eSense servo extruder, and intelligent nozzle camera. The H2D is a multi-material fabrication machine integrating 3D printing, laser cutting, and engraving. It features a redesigned AMS for efficient filament management, including a high-temperature version. Advanced safety features, AI-powered automation, and seamless cloud connectivity make it versatile for designers and makers. The H2D integrates digital and physical creations, unlocking new possibilities. Visit the Bamboo Lab website for more information.

21 min
03/27/2025

Handling Trillions of Transactions

Uber’s payment system, handling trillions of dollars in transactions, faced challenges with scattered financial data. To address this, they implemented a job order system, ensuring a balanced ledger with entries for every financial movement. This system, built on an immutable ledger store with periodic sealing and cryptographic verification, provides data integrity and security. Uber built a custom financial platform using an immutable ledger to handle 250 billion records and 300 terabytes of data. They phased the data migration, using checkpoints and a shadow writer system for data integrity. The platform utilizes trillions of indexes, including strongly consistent indexes for critical transactions and eventually consistent indexes for less time-sensitive data, to efficiently manage and query the data. The conversation highlights the engineering behind digital transactions, using Uber as an example.

15 min
03/27/2025

General Purpose Humanoid Robot

Figure, a company developing humanoid robots, aims to address labor shortages in industries like warehouses, transportation, and retail. Their AI model, Helix, combines vision, language, and action to enable robots to learn, adapt, and perform complex tasks. Helix’s capabilities, including depth perception, multi-scale visual representation, and learned visual proprioception, allow robots to handle logistics tasks swiftly and adaptably. The Helix system, comprising two neural networks, enables human-level dexterity and adaptability in robots. It facilitates seamless collaboration between robots and natural language interaction with humans. The Figure O2 robot, designed to resemble humans, is commercially viable and can operate in various industries, while the Figure O3 focuses on mass production and cost reduction. Figure’s Bot Queue facility is designed for efficient robot production, prioritizing safety, reliability, and scalability. The company’s master plan envisions a future where robots handle dangerous or unpleasant jobs, freeing humans for more meaningful work and potentially transforming the economy and society. The future is closer than you think. Keep exploring, learning, and asking questions.

18 min
03/26/2025

Conversational Image Creation

OpenAI’s new GPT-4 image generation capabilities, integrated into ChatGPT, demonstrate impressive potential. It can maintain character consistency, follow complex instructions, and accurately render text in images. It can also create transparent images, stickers, and restyle existing images. GPT-4’s image generation capabilities have significantly improved, enabling the creation of more precise and useful images. It can refine images through conversation, learn from uploaded images, and generate realistic images in various styles. This technology has the potential to revolutionize fields like game development, education, and business. The conversation concludes with a thank you and a goodbye.

14 min

What's New Today covers everything new in tech, health, and space.

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