New Delhi:

Tech honchos Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, and others hailed India’s historic win over South Africa in a nerve-wrenching final of the ICC T20 World Cup at the Kensington Oval in Barbados on Saturday.

Alphabet and Google CEO Pichai posted on X: “What a game, could barely breathe, everything that makes sports incredible. Congrats India, so well deserved! SA was incredible. Amazing.”

Congratulating the Men in Blue, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Nadella said, “What a final. Congrats, India, and well played, South Africa. Super World Cup… let us have more cricket in the West Indies and USA.”

Meanwhile, Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra asked ChatGPT to make a graphic image showing the Indian cricket team as Superheroes.

“Because they were SuperCool till the end. The greatest gift of this final to India was that it didn’t come easy. It almost slipped out of their grasp. But they never lost the match in their minds,” he posted on X.

“Reminding all of us that being a Superhero never comes without a fierce determination to win and a Never Give In attitude. Jai Ho!” Mahindra said.

Earlier, Hardik Pandya’s 3-20 and Jasprit Bumrah’s 2-18 helped an unbeaten India to come back and clinch their second title in the shortest format with a seven-run win at the Kensington Oval.

Talismanic batter Virat Kohli stepped up to end his lean run with a 59-ball 76 to help India post a competitive 176/7, the highest total in a Men’s T20 World Cup final.

Kohli’s 72-run stand for the fourth wicket with Axar Patel, who made 47 off 31 balls, and a 57-run partnership with Shivam Dube, who hit a 16-ball 27, helped India go past the 175-run mark, as they scored 42 runs off the last three overs.

In reply, South Africa were very much in sight to chase down the total. But Hardik taking out Heinrich Klaasen propelled India to come back into the match and end a long 11-year global trophy drought as they restricted South Africa to 169/8.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Google CEO Sundar Pichai expressed his enthusiasm for the ICC Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup, highlighting the increased participation of teams this year.

In a post on X, Mr. Pichai shared his excitement for the global growth of his favourite sport, which is being celebrated with a dedicated Google Doodle.

“More teams than ever will participate in the ICC Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup this year. Exciting to see my favorite sport growing globally – and celebrated in today’s #Doodle. First toss is in a few hours – good luck to all the teams!” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

The ICC T20 World Cup 2024 kickstarted on June 2 in the USA and West Indies.

This tournament is the ninth edition since it started in 2009. The United States is the host nation this year, and a record 20 teams from around the world will compete on the big stage. The teams are divided into four groups of five for the group stage, and face off against every other country in their group once.

The ICC Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup gives the best men’s cricketers in the world the opportunity to show off their skills and represent their nation. The ICC T20 World Cup will be played in the West Indies and the USA from June 1 to 29.

The USA and Canada will lock horns against each other in the tournament’s opener at the Grand Prairie Stadium on Sunday.

In the tournament, India will be aiming to end their ICC trophy drought, having last won the ICC Champions Trophy in 2013.Since then, India has reached the 50-over World Cup final in 2023, semifinal in 2015 and 2019, the title clash of the ICC World Test Championship in 2021 and 2023, T20 WC final in 2014, semifinals in 2016 and 2022 but failed to secure a big ICC trophy.

India will be aiming to win their first T20 WC title since they won the inaugural edition of the tournament back in 2007 in South Africa. In the last edition held in Australia in 2022, India lost to England by 10 wickets in the semifinals.

India T20 WC Squad:

Rohit Sharma (c), Hardik Pandya, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Sanju Samson, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj.

Mountain View:

Google on Tuesday said it would introduce AI-generated answers to online queries made by users in the United States, in one of the biggest updates to its search engine in 25 years.

“I’m excited to announce that we will begin launching this fully revamped experience, ‘AI overviews,’ to everyone in the US this week,” Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said at an event in California.

The feature would soon be available in other countries, he added.

With the change, many of Google’s search results will feature an AI “overview” at the top of the page before the more typical unfurling of links and features.

The search engine’s AI answers, generated by Google’s Gemini AI technology, offer a paragraph or two of explanation with links to the online sources that supplied the information.

“You can ask whatever’s on your mind or whatever you need to get done – from researching to planning to brainstorming – and Google will take care of the legwork,” said Google Search team boss Liz Reid.

The change seems to be an answer to growing pressure from AI-powered search engines like Perplexity and the repeated rumors that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is building its own AI search tool.

Creators and small publishers are nervous about the change, fearing users will no longer click through to websites to find information.

Research firm Gartner predicts traffic to the web from search engines will fall 25 percent by 2026 because of the introduction AI bots and such features features.

Google pushed back at the suggestion that ChatGPT-style chatbots could impact its business.

“We’ve found that with AI Overviews, people use Search more, and are more satisfied with their results,” Reid said.

“Rather than breaking your question into multiple searches, you can ask your most complex questions, with all the nuances and caveats you have in mind, all in one go.”

– ‘Intuitive and helpful’  –

Google’s announcement was part of an AI-focused keynote presentation opening Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California.

The company will also soon start testing applying AI to searches based on video content as the query source, according to Reid.

Such multi-modal queries were among the highlights of OpenAI’s release on Monday of GPT-4o, an update to OpenAI’s flagship model that could generate content or understand commands in voice, text, or images.

OpenAI’s update to its technology proved to be extremely conversational — able to crack jokes, write songs and help tutor a student in algebra.

Google, like OpenAI, also showed demos of staff members asking its AI to recognize its surroundings through the video camera on a smartphone and other assistant-like skills.

This ability is designed to be “conversational, intuitive and helpful,” according to Gemini Experiences and Google Assistant general manager Sissie Hsiao.

“You can collaborate with the most intelligent and personalized Gemini yet.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai is on the cusp of achieving a rare milestone for a non-founder tech executive: a 10-figure fortune.

Since Pichai, 51, became CEO of Google in 2015, the stock has surged more than 400%, significantly outperforming the S&P 500 and Nasdaq over the same period. It hit a fresh record Friday after the company’s first-quarter earnings beat expectations, boosted by AI-driven growth in its cloud computing unit. It also introduced a dividend for the first time in its history.

That rally, alongside hefty stock awards that have made him one of the world’s highest-paid executives, has boosted Pichai’s fortune to nearly $1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

A Google spokesperson declined to comment.

It’s a remarkable rise for the native of Chennai, India, who grew up in a two-room apartment where he and his younger brother slept on the living room floor. During much of his childhood, the Pichais didn’t have a television or a car, he has said in interviews. At times, they didn’t even have running water.

The family got their first rotary telephone when he was 12, which he said introduced him to the conveniences of technology. That, along with a healthy curiosity about his father’s job as an electrical engineer for the British conglomerate GEC, attracted the young Pichai to the tech industry.

He excelled at school, eventually landing a spot at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, where he studied engineering. When he won a scholarship to Stanford University, his father withdrew $1,000 from the family’s savings – more than his annual salary – to cover the cost of Pichai’s plane ticket and other expenses.

“My dad and mom did what a lot of parents did at the time,” Pichai said in a 2014 interview. “They sacrificed a lot of their life and used a lot of their disposable income to make sure their children were educated.”

After earning another advanced degree at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a stint as a consultant at McKinsey, he joined Google in 2004 as a product manager, leading the development of major projects like the Google Toolbar and Google Chrome.

‘Great Facilitator’

Pichai’s humility and ability to build consensus emerged early on, said Keval Desai, who worked with him during his first years at Google.

“He’s not looking to be the most dominant voice,” said Desai, who is now a founder and managing director at Shakti, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. “He’s very comfortable in his own skin. It allowed him very early on to be a great facilitator across these strong, opinionated people.”

Pichai was selected in 2015 by co-founder Larry Page to be Google’s CEO, while Page became CEO of newly formed holding company Alphabet. Pichai took over that role as well in 2019 when Page and co-founder Sergey Brin – two of the 10 richest people in the world, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index – stepped back from day-to-day management.

“There is no one that we have relied on more since Alphabet was founded, and no better person to lead Google and Alphabet into the future,” Brin and Page, who combined have a net worth of almost $300 billion, said of Pichai in a 2019 letter.

In his time as CEO, Pichai has overseen a major expansion of the company’s product line with the addition of Google Assistant, Google Home, Google Pixel, Google Workspace and more. He was also an early adopter of artificial intelligence, calling it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

While Alphabet has been criticized for its AI offerings and some investors have questioned its ability to compete with OpenAI, last week’s earnings provided reassurance that its spending on the technology is starting to pay off.

Pichai’s net worth includes $424 million in current shareholdings as well as roughly $600 million from share sales since he became CEO. Bloomberg’s wealth index assumes those sales were taxed and reinvested in the stock market.

Pichai’s status as a near-billionaire is a reminder of the value that he has created during his time at the helm of Google, Desai said.

“What it says to me is first and foremost that he has done right by shareholders,” Desai said. “He’s benefited because Google’s stock has done really well.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti recently claimed that in modern times, one cannot become a CEO in America unless they are of Indian descent. Mr Garcetti’s humorous quip came at the 2024 Indiaspora AI Summit at Stanford University recently. 

“The successes have happened, more than one in 10 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies now are Indian immigrants who studied in the US. The old joke was you could not become a CEO in the US if you were Indian, now the joke is you cannot become a CEO in America if you are not Indian, whether it is Google, Microsoft or Starbucks, people have come and made a big difference,” Mr Garcetti said. 

#WATCH | Delhi: US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti says, “The successes have happened, more than 1 in 10 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies now are Indian immigrants who studied in the US. The old joke was you could not become a CEO in the US if you are Indian, now the joke is you… pic.twitter.com/gTdvXng9mi

— ANI (@ANI) April 26, 2024

Google and its parent organisation Alphabet Inc. are overseen by Sundar Pichai while operations at Microsoft and Starbucks are led by Satya Nadella and Laxman Narasimhan, respectively. 

Speaking alongside Mr Garcetti, Indian-origin business leaders echoed similar sentiments while appreciating Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, particularly his role in positioning India as a global hub of innovation and progress. 

“India is perceived very differently in the global space. It’s a space of innovation. It’s a space of human capital. It’s a space of progress and innovation. And as we look forward, what Modi has been able to do is put India into the global map as a credible innovator, leader for all countries to invest in and grow,” said Informatica CEO Amit Walia.

Similarly, Ashutosh Kulkarni, CEO of Elastic, commended PM Modi’s government for its openness to innovation and industry, noting India’s vast potential for progress. Navin Chaddha of Mayfield Fund hailed the “amazing” era under PM Modi’s leadership.

The Indiaspora AI Summit, besides global tech tycoons, was also attended by Rajya Sabha MP Satnam Singh Sandhu.

A picture, featuring Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai dining together, has sparked widespread buzz on social media. The grainy photo, initially believed to be a recent occurrence, has sparked numerous reactions and memes.

Users on X, formerly Twitter, speculated on the nature of the meeting, with some suggesting potential collaborations between the two tech giants. However, it later emerged that the photo was from a  2017 encounter at a Vietnamese restaurant in Palo Alto.

“What do you think Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook are Cooking for us?” a user wrote on X.

What do you think Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook are Cooking for us? pic.twitter.com/wBojjeaATi

— iArgue (@x_ai_a12) March 18, 2024

“Let them cook,” replied another user. 

Let them cook

— Bilawal Sidhu (@bilawalsidhu) March 19, 2024

Someone wrote, “This will be the biggest win-win in the business history. Google will emerge as the likely winner for the GenAI market and Apple will be the primary platform for GenAI access. Can you imagine how capable Macs that are powered with AI will be?”

This will be the biggest win-win in the business history.

Google will emerge as the likely winner for the GenAI market and Apple will be primary platform for GenAI access.

Can you imagine how capable Macs that are powered with AI will be?

— Oguz O. | ???? Capitalist ???? (@thexcapitalist) March 18, 2024

A person came up with some clever puns, stating, “They are cooking something !! Or they PICHing something to COOK.”

They cooking something !!

Or they PICHing something to COOK

( Ik it’s a really bad joke )

— Mr. K (@Mr_K_here) March 18, 2024

“Probably the Google AI going into iPhone discussions,” someone guessed. 

Probably the Google AI going into iPhone discussions.

— Conquests of the Impossible (@Conquestsbook) March 19, 2024

A user chimed in, “Two old guys trying to stay relevant by figuring out this new fangled AI thing.”

Two old guys trying to stay relevant by figuring out this new fangled AI thing.

— fgdhew (@Daniel50007832) March 18, 2024

Meanwhile, someone clarified, “That is an old picture. This was a picture of them eating in Palo Alto a few years ago at this Vietnamese fusion restaurant.”

That is an old picture. This was a picture of them eating in Palo Alto a few years ago at this Vietnamese fusion restaurant

— Tommy Mustache (@MustacheTommy) March 18, 2024

The buzz started after Bloomberg reported that Apple is in advanced negotiations with Google to integrate its Gemini AI models into the iPhone. This potential collaboration aims to improve Apple’s AI capabilities, which have been said to lag behind rivals.

Following the news, Google’s stock price surged by over 6%, while Apple’s saw a rise of up to 2.5%. According to Bloomberg, Apple aims to incorporate Google’s AI technology into its next iOS operating system release, expected later this year. 

This potential collaboration comes amidst an existing search engine partnership between Apple and Google, which has recently come under scrutiny from the US Department of Justice for alleged antitrust violations. Apple has also reportedly explored partnerships with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, for generative AI initiatives. 

While Apple CEO Tim Cook has promised significant AI updates, some observers question the company’s decision to collaborate with external partners for AI advancements. Analysts speculate that a deal with Google could strengthen its position in mobile device AI. The outcome of these negotiations could shape the future of AI technology in the tech industry.

For people at the trend-setting tech festival in Texas,U.S., the scandal that erupted after Google’s Gemini chatbot cranked out images of Black and Asian Nazi soldiers was seen as a warning about the power artificial intelligence can give tech titans.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai last month slammed “completely unacceptable” errors by his company’s Gemini AI app after gaffes such as the images of ethnically diverse Nazi troops forced it to temporarily stop users from creating pictures of people.

Social media users mocked and criticised Google for the historically inaccurate images, like those showing a female black U.S. Senator from the 1800s — when the first such Senator was not elected until 1992.

“We definitely messed up on the image generation,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin said at a recent AI “hackathon,” adding that the company should have tested Gemini more thoroughly.

Folks interviewed at the popular South by Southwest arts and tech festival in Austin said that the Gemini stumble highlights the inordinate power a handful of companies have over the artificial intelligence platforms that are poised to change the way people live and work.

‘Too woke’

“Essentially, it was too ‘woke,’” said Joshua Weaver, a lawyer and tech entrepreneur, meaning Google had gone overboard in its effort to project inclusion and diversity.

Google quickly corrected its errors, but the underlying problem remains, said Charlie Burgoyne, chief executive of the Valkyrie applied science lab in Texas.

He equated Google’s fix of Gemini to putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

While Google long had the luxury of having time to refine its products, it is now scrambling in an AI race with Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and others, Mr. Weaver noted, adding, “They are moving faster than they know how to move.” Mistakes made in an effort at cultural sensitivity are flashpoints, particularly given the tense political divisions in the U.S., a situation exacerbated by Elon Musk’s X platform, the former Twitter.

“People on Twitter are very gleeful to celebrate any embarrassing thing that happens in tech,” Mr. Weaver said, adding that reaction to the Nazi gaffe was “overblown.”

The mishap did, however, call into question the degree of control those using AI tools have over information, he maintained.

In the coming decade, the amount of information — or misinformation — created by AI could dwarf that generated by people, meaning those controlling AI safeguards will have huge influence on the world, Mr. Weaver said.

Karen Palmer, an award-winning mixed-reality creator with Interactive Films Ltd., said she could imagine a future in which someone gets into a robo-taxi and, “if the AI scans you and thinks that there are any outstanding violations against you… you’ll be taken into the local police station,” not your intended destination.

AI is trained on mountains of data and can be put to work on a growing range of tasks, from image or audio generation to determining who gets a loan or whether a medical scan detects cancer.

Cultural bias

But that data comes from a world rife with cultural bias, disinformation and social inequity — not to mention online content that can include casual chats between friends or intentionally exaggerated and provocative posts — and AI models can echo those flaws.

With Gemini, Google engineers tried to rebalance the algorithms to provide results better reflecting human diversity. The effort backfired.

“It can really be tricky, nuanced and subtle to figure out where bias is and how it is included,” said technology lawyer Alex Shahrestani, a managing partner at Promise Legal law firm for tech companies.

Even well-intentioned engineers involved with training AI cannot help but bring their own life experience and subconscious bias to the process, he and others believe.

Mr. Burgoyne also castigated big tech for keeping the inner workings of generative AI hidden in “black boxes,” so users are unable to detect any hidden biases. “The capabilities of the outputs have far exceeded our understanding of the methodology,” he said.

Experts and activists are calling for more diversity in teams creating AI and related tools, and greater transparency as to how they work — particularly when algorithms rewrite users’ requests to “improve” results.

A challenge is how to appropriately build in perspectives of the world’s many and diverse communities, Jason Lewis of the Indigenous Futures Resource Center and related groups said here.

At Indigenous AI, Mr. Lewis works with farflung indigenous communities to design algorithms that use their data ethically while reflecting their perspectives on the world, something he does not always see in the “arrogance” of big tech leaders. His own work, he told a group, stands in “such a contrast from Silicon Valley rhetoric, where there is a top-down ‘Oh, we’re doing this because we are going to benefit all humanity’ bullshit,” receiving laughter.

Washington:

 Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet and its subsidiary Google, will testify on Monday in the once-in-a generation antitrust fight over Google’s dominance of search and some parts of search advertising.

The Take

Mr Pichai, who is being called as a witness for Google, will likely be asked about the company’s investments aimed at keeping its search competitive, especially as smartphones took over, and innovation in search advertising. The government, in cross examination, may ask why the company pays billions of dollars annually to ensure that Google search is the default in smartphones.

Context

The government has argued that Google, which has some 90% of the search market, illegally paid an estimated $10 billion annually to smartphone makers like Apple and wireless carriers like AT&T and others to be the default in search on their devices in order to stay on top. The clout in search makes Google a heavy hitter in the lucrative advertising market, boosting its profits.

Google has argued the revenue share agreements are legal and that it has invested to keep its search and advertising businesses competitive. It has also argued that if people are dissatisfied with defaults that they can, and do, switch to another search provider.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

California:

The Chief Executive Officer of Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, has thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a “terrific” meeting to discuss Google’s ongoing commitment to India.

In a post on X, expressing his gratitude to the Prime Minister, Mr Pichai wrote, “Thank you, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for the terrific meeting today to discuss Google’s ongoing commitment to India, and how we are expanding our operations, leveraging AI, and increasing our partnerships.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually interacted with the CEO of Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, earlier on Monday, October 16.

During the interaction, PM Modi and Mr Pichai discussed Google’s plan to participate in expanding the electronics manufacturing ecosystem in India. Prime Minister appreciated Google’s partnership with HP to manufacture Chromebooks in India.

Prime Minister acknowledged Google’s 100 languages initiative and encouraged efforts to make AI tools available in Indian Languages. He also encouraged Google to work on AI tools for Good Governance, according to the Prime Minister’s Office statement.

Prime Minister welcomed Google’s plans to open its global fintech operations centre at the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) in Gandhinagar.

Mr Pichai informed the Prime Minister regarding Google’s plans to improve financial inclusion in India by leveraging the strength and reach of GPay and UPI. He also emphasized Google’s commitment to contribute to the development trajectory of India, the release said.

Prime Minister also invited Google to contribute to the upcoming Global Partnership on AI Summit, which will be hosted by India in December 2023 in New Delhi, it added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually interacted with Google CEO Sundar Pichai today. They discussed Google’s plan to participate in expanding the electronics manufacturing ecosystem in India.

The Prime Minister appreciated Google’s partnership with HP to manufacture Chromebooks in India.

PM Modi acknowledged Google’s 100 languages initiative and encouraged efforts to make AI tools available in Indian Languages. He also encouraged Google to work on AI tools for good governance.

Prime Minister welcomed Google’s plans to open its global fintech operations centre at the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) in Gandhinagar.

Mr Pichai informed the Prime Minister about Google’s plans to improve financial inclusion in India by leveraging the strength and reach of GPay and UPI. He also emphasized Google’s commitment to contribute to the development trajectory of India.

Prime Minister also invited Google to contribute to the upcoming global partnership on AI summit, which will be hosted by India in December in Delhi.

Earlier this year, PM Modi had met Mr Pichai during his visit to the US.

Google has been operating in India since 2004, with offices in five key cities across the country – Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Gurgaon – Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Pune – with thousands of employees.