Tech Tok: Data Protection Bill passed in Lower House
Despite vigorous slogans from the Opposition, the Lok Sabha passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023, on Monday through a voice vote.
Hyderabad: Amid loud sloganeering from the Opposition, the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023, was passed in the Lok Sabha through a voice vote on Monday.
Subjected to criticism ever since the draft of this bill was made public, it requires companies to do better in protecting the digital data they’ve collected. It also gives certain questionable exceptions for the government and law enforcement agencies.
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The Bill was introduced by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, and mandates the formation of a Data Protection Board. It allows individuals the right to request data correction and to even erase the data. The Centre says that this bill balances both the right of individuals to protect their personal data and the government’s need to process and store it for lawful purposes. However, many say that it fails on both counts.
The first red flag that many raised is that it gives exceptions under the grounds of national security. Potential violation of the fundamental right to privacy of citizens is the concern here. That said, this bill also would completely disallow disclosing personal information as well. This means that when an RTI is filed in the public interest to disclose the salary of an official, using the Data Protection Bill, it could be avoided.
If the government can make expectations for itself, then making a few exceptions to maintain transparency seems only fair.
Google to help check grammar using AI
Of course, artificial intelligence is much better equipped to write content without any grammatical errors. Now, thanks to Google’s latest endeavor it will check your grammar too.
The tech giant has added a new grammar checker to its search engine, which uses an AI system to analyse language. This will not only do away with the hassle of opening a new application to cross-check grammar for a single sentence but will also lead to better search results.
While Google Docs and Gmail have had grammar checks built-in for a while now, this will be the first time Google’s search engine will do the same.
Mark and Elon’s cage fight to be live-streamed on X
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and X Chief Elon Musk have agreed online to indulge in a cage fight. While the date for the fight has not been fixed yet, Zuckerberg is training in jiu-jitsu and Musk has tweeted about working out.
From sparring with each other online to agreeing to a literal cage fight, these two tech bosses have come a long way.
Recently, Musk said that the fight will be live-streamed on his platform X, formerly Twitter. This leaves one wondering, whether the future of the tech industry is indeed in safe hands.
Zoom to employ user data to train its AI
Jumping on the AI bandwagon, the popular video conferencing platform Zoom is also training its artificial intelligence software. It recently updated its terms of service to allow the use of some customer data for training and improving its model.
The update, which took effect on July 27, says that Zoom can access, use, and process data for any purpose, that include machine learning or artificial intelligence.
