South Asia Investor Review

A Singapore-based cybersecurity firm Group-IB discovered in June that over 100,000 ChatGPT user accounts were compromised and their credentials found on the Dark Web. Among the accounts reported compromised, India topped with 12,632, followed by Pakistan with 9,217 and Brazil with 6,531. Bangladesh witnessed the fewest instances with 2,463. This report gave a glimpse of the high interest level of Indians and Pakistanis in generative AI.  Another  report  attributed to Similarweb, which tracks popularity of websites by number of visitors, ranked  ChatGPT  in Pakistan at number 7, ahead of Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. Globally ChatGPT website is ranked 17th. Prior to this, there was a series of news reports about the launch of Presidential Initiative for Artificial Intelligence and Computing (PIAIC) by President Arif Alvi, and then came the government's policy to train one million AI experts in the country by 2027. Pakistanis published 2,600 AI-related research ...

Pakistan's  digital transformation  is in full swing. Over three-quarters of Pakistanis living in the top three metros of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad are connected to the Internet, according to a report titled "Journey to Digital" produced by global tech giant Google and Kantara consultants. Researchers found that two-thirds of urban and nearly half of rural Pakistanis regularly use the Internet in the South Asian country of 220 million, the 5th most populous nation in the world. It has a young population with the median age of 22.8 years. 46% of Pakistanis access the Internet everyday.  They use the Internet for education, entertainment, shopping and to search for information. Over Half of All Pakistanis Are Connected to the Internet. Source: Google-Kantar Pakistan has seen a phenomenal growth of 3500% in broadband subscriptions over the last 8 years . Pakistanis now own more than 103 million smartphones with mobile  broadband subscriptions . In a Youtube presenta...

Internet traffic in Pakistan has surged 15% amid  COVID-19  lockdown, according to Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA). This spike has occurred in spite the fact that  Netflix  and YouTube have reduced their bandwidth requirements during the current health crisis. Netflix says it has cut its bandwidth use by 25% without sacrificing quality.  Google's  YouTube  video platform has decided to temporarily change the quality of all videos on YouTube to standard definition.The increased traffic is mainly due to people working from homes. Pakistan has nearly  80 million  broadband subscribers  as of now. PTA: In an  announcement  on March 26, 2019, PTA reported "net increase of around 15% in internet usage was witnessed since last week as the country fights against Coronavirus". PTA went on to assure users that "there is sufficient internet capacity available in the country to meet the growing demands of the future". T...

Silicon Valley tech giant Google has named Indian-born IIT-educated Sundar Pichai to head its search, ads, maps, Play Store, YouTube, and Android businesses as part of a major reorganization announced by the company. Current Google CEOs Larry Page and Sergei Brin have kicked themselves upstairs to lead Alphabet, a new holding company which will include Google as well as affiliated companies like the life-extension project Calico and a drone delivery venture called Wing, according to  media reports . FOBs and ABCDs: Pichai and other Indian-born individuals in  Silicon Valley  are often referred to as "FOBs" (Fresh Off the Boat) by American-born Indians. FOBs return the "affection" by calling American-born Indians "ABCDs" (American Born Confused Desis). For those unfamiliar with the Indian vernacular, Pichai's first name Sundar means beautiful. All joking aside, it's a matter of great pride and joy to Indians and  other immigrants  for one of the...

Last year at the World Economic Forum, U.S.-based security software firm McAfee's CEO Dave Walt reportedly told some attendees that China, the United States, Russia, Israel and France are among 20 countries locked in a cyberspace arms race and gearing up for possible Internet hostilities. He further said that the traditional defensive stance of government computer infrastructures has shifted in recent years to a more offensive posture aimed at espionage, and deliberate disruption of critical networks in both government and private sectors. Such attacks could disrupt not only command and control for modern weapon systems such as ballistic missiles, but also critical civilian systems including banking, electrical grid, telecommunications, transportation, etc, and bring life to a screeching halt. Richard Clark, the former US cyber security czar, explained in a Newsweek interview the potential impact of cyber attacks on privately owned and operators infrastructure as follows: "I...

After painfully watching the heartbreaking scenes of carnage in Pakistani provincial capital of NWFP on TV screens, it came as a pleasant surprise to see the New York Times mention Peshawar in a different context; volunteer cartographers contributing to digital maps "from Petaluma to Peshawar". It particularly caught my attention because I have had the pleasure of visiting both of these fine cities, and I currently live not too far from the one in California. "From Petaluma to Peshawar, these amateurs are arming themselves with GPS devices and easy-to-use software to create digital maps where none were available before, or fixing mistakes and adding information to existing ones", said the NY Times , referring to the volunteer mapmakers contributing to digital maps offered by Google, OpenStreetMaps and others. While both Google and OpenStreetMaps are community created, the main difference between the two is that OpenStreetMap provides its map data under a Creativ...

The three words that stand out in the popular Silicon Valley lexicon are "Risk", "Disrupt" and "Change". Almost all high-tech aficionados love to talk about entrepreneurs taking "risks" to "disrupt" the existing technologies, products, markets and systems to bring about fundamental "change" in how we live, work and play. The search giant Google is often cited as epitomizing risk-taking, disruption and change. Some serious observers and writers are now taking this discussion a step further into the realm of violent insurgent groups such as the Hezbollah and the Taliban and how they are becoming a powerful disruptive force for geopolitical change. Author Joshua Cooper Ramo, in his book "Age of Unthinkable" talks about how Hezbollah has become a powerful disruptive force in the Middle East. In a recent commentary , Ramo says, "...in my dealings with Hezbollah over the years as a journalist, I had found myself fa...

"The Web has clearly evolved to where people are running complex applications in the browser," said Google's Sunder Pichai. "It's not just a window where you show a Web page." Pichai, vice president of Product Management at Google, describes Chrome, Google's newly released Web browser, as a new platform for Web development. As the Web becomes a powerful platform for complex applications development and deployment, the browser wars are becoming more heated. The holy grail for the Web based companies such as Google and Yahoo is to offer Web applications to achieve the look and feel as well as the power and performance of desktop applications. A powerful Web browser will help in this pursuit but it won't be sufficient. Ubiquitous, reliable, high-bandwidth, always-on connectivity will be essential. Significant improvements in mini browser software and reliable, broadband, wireless connectivity will also help spawn a mobile Internet revolution . Google c...

When Intel puts its weight behind an initiative, it automatically gets a boost. But when Google and Intel together join forces, no one in their right mind can bet against such a combined force. Mobile Internet with broadband access has achieved that inevitability with Google backing a Wimax joint venture between wireless veteran Craig McCaw's Clearwire and Sprint-Nextel. In addition to Intel and Google, this venture is also supported by Comcast and Time-Warner. As the world goes mobile, Intel's objective is to extend its leadership position in platforms used to access the Internet. Google is aiming at capturing the huge market for mobile advertising that is likely to grab a increasingly larger share of online advertising revenue. The wireless carriers such as Verizon and AT&T have long been busy building walled gardens and controlling the distribution and content of mobile platforms. On the other hand, Intel and Google have long been arguing for an open model similar to th...