Drone woes and DGCA roadblock stall Rajasthan's AI-powered artificial rain project
Touted as India's first AI-powered artificial rain initiative, the project is fast becoming a source of embarrassment for the Rajasthan government due to repeated setbacks and delays. The formal launch was initially scheduled for 31 July, with Agriculture Minister Kirori Lal Meena set to inaugurate the operation. A series of demonstration sorties had been planned until 14 August, using a specially designed drone imported from Taiwan.
The drone, resembling a light aircraft, was intended to ascend to 4 km above ground level and disperse sodium chloride particles into moisture-laden clouds, triggering rainfall over the Ramgarh Dam and its 10-kilometre catchment area. However, the launch was postponed after the India Meteorological Department (IMD) issued alerts for heavy rainfall in the region.
When trials finally began, the project was quickly beset by technical and logistical issues. On 12 August, the first day of trials, a puja and havan were conducted at the dam site to invoke divine blessings. But the drone failed to take off. Officials blamed the failure on mobile network congestion caused by thousands of spectators, which allegedly interfered with the drone's GPS signal. Police were forced to disperse the crowd, but two additional attempts that day also failed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
India.com
18 minutes ago
- India.com
AI Superpower Ranking: Not China or India but this country is leading the world in AI, India is at...
Artificial Intelligence AI Superpower Ranking: In a significant development in the fast changing world dominated by Artificial Intelligence (AI), a new report has ranked the top countries of the world on the basis of their Artificial Intelligence capabilities. In a point of good news for India, the country has emerged ahead of China in the AI Superpower Ranking 2025 released by US-based Technology Resource Group (TRG). As per the AI Superpower Ranking 2025, the United States has secured the top spot while India was ranked sixth, leaving China one place behind at seventh. Here are all the details you need to know about the AI Superpower Ranking 2025. Who has topped the AI Superpower Ranking 2025? As per the AI Superpower Ranking 2025 released by US-based Technology Resource Group (TRG), the United States has got the first place in this list, UAE is at number two, Saudi Arabia is at number three. Moving forward, the Asian giant South Korea is at number four, while France is at number five. Talking about India's rank, India is at number six and China is at number seven. After China, there are countries like Britain and Germany in the list. How is AI Superpower Ranking decided? Talking about its methodology, the AI Superpower Ranking has been prepared on the basis of countries' AI supercomputing capacity, number of AI companies and employees, and government preparedness for AI adoption. Story highlights: A US-based Technology Resource Group has released AI Superpower rankings. US has topped the AI Superpower rankings. India has ranked 6th in the rankings, beating China. UAE has been given the 2nd stop in the AI Superpower rankings. AI Superpower Ranking: India vs China As per the AI Superpower Ranking, the US is on the top of the list with 39.7 million H100-equivalent megabytes of computing power and a power capacity of 19,800 megawatts. In comparison, India has 1.2 million H100-equivalent megabytes of computing power with 1,100 MW capacity, far ahead of China's 400,000 megabytes and 289 MW capacity. Add as a Preferred Source
&w=3840&q=100)
First Post
18 minutes ago
- First Post
How US built new tool to stop AI from making nuclear weapons
Anthropic, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) start-up backed by Amazon and Google, has developed a new tool to stop its chatbot from being used for the nefarious purposes of building a nuclear bomb or a reactor Anthropic, whose AI bot Claude is a direct competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT, said it has been working with the US government for over a year to build in the safeguard. Today, everyone is obsessed with Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is said to have the potential to change society forever, in good ways and bad. Many hope it will cure humans of disease, extend our lifespans solve climate change, and unlock the secrets of the universe. Others fear it will cause some jobs to go away forever, leaving millions out of work and society on the brink. Others imagine a dark, dystopian future with AI ruling over humanity – perhaps in the aftermath of it ordering nuclear strikes. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Now, some are taking steps to at least safeguard its AI models from being used as tools to build nuclear weapons. But what happened? What do we know? Let's take a closer look What happened? Anthropic, an AI start-up backed by Amazon and Google, has developed a new tool to stop its AI from being used for the nefarious means of building a nuclear bomb. Anthropic's Claude is a direct competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Anthropic said it has been working with the US government for over a year to build in the safeguard. The company said it has coordinated with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to figure out a 'classifier' that can halt 'concerning' conversations — for example, how to build a nuclear reactor or bomb – on its AI system. Anthropics said the program sprung out of its 2024 exercises with the US Department of Energy. The NNSA falls under the US Energy Department. It is tasked with making sure the United States 'maintains a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear stockpile through the application of unparalleled science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing.' The NNSA's Office of Defence Programs is in charge of maintaining and modernising the country's nuclear stockpile. How did it do it? The company said it was able to put together a list of gauges that can help Claude identify 'potentially concerning conversations about nuclear weapons development'. The classifier acts like a spam filter in the email and identifies real-time threats. The company has claimed that the classifier can determine with almost 95 per cent accuracy if the person carrying on the conversation with the AI bot is intending to cause harm. The company said the classifier identified 94.8 per cent of nuclear weapons queries. However, it inaccurately classified 5.2 per cent of the queries as dangerous. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The company said it was able to put together a list of gauges that can help Claude identify 'potentially concerning conversations about nuclear weapons development'. Anthropic has said that it has already employed the classifier in some of its Claude models. 'As AI models become more capable, we need to keep a close eye on whether they can provide users with dangerous technical knowledge in ways that could threaten national security,' Anthropic has said. The company has vowed to share what it has learnt with the Frontier Model Forum, an AI industry body it has co-founded alongside Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft and Google, in order to help other companies build similar programmes. Anthropic earlier in August said it would offer its Claude AI model to the US government for $1 (Rs 87), joining the ranks of AI start-ups proposing lucrative deals to win federal contracts. This came days after OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude were added to the US government's list of approved AI vendors. 'America's AI leadership requires that our government institutions have access to the most capable, secure AI tools available,' CEO Dario Amodei said. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Rival OpenAI had also announced a similar offer in August, wherein ChatGPT Enterprise was made available to participating US federal agencies for $1 per agency for the next year. With inputs from agencies
The Hindu
18 minutes ago
- The Hindu
TG eyes more data centres with advanced infra for quality power, Data City
Provision of advanced infrastructure to support the power requirements, setting up of a Data City as well as focus on harnessing renewable energy are measures Telangana government has decided to focus on amid the emergence of Hyderabad as a preferred destination for firms setting up data centres. The proposed Data City will be established near Hyderabad to facilitate world-class infrastructure and with an eye on future needs of data centres, highly placed sources said. Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy is spearheading the State's drive to attract more data centre investments, especially AI-ready data centres. The government has been actively engaging in dialogue with major global corporations in pursuit of investment opportunities. Since January 2024, Telangana has attracted data centre projects entailing more than ₹1.42 lakh crore investments with total capacity addition of 5,189 MW. The list does not include projects whose investments are yet to be disclosed, sources said. Among the projects announced is the high-performance AI compute facility with a cumulative capacity of 20 petaflops or more, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) announced at the Telangana Global AI Summit 2024. The government has already allotted 10 acres in the upcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI) City. At the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2024 in Davos, Iron Mountain (previously Web Werks) announced ₹5,200 crore investment on 10 MW networking-heavy data centre in Hyderabad. The facility is set to start operations soon. After commissioning the 10 MW facility, the company plans to build a 100 MW hyperscale data centre in the Southwest part of the city, sources said. American tech major Amazon Web Services (AWS) is investing in expansion of data centres in Hyderabad and committed ₹60,000 crore investment to add 1,200 MW capacity over the next few years. Yotta Technologies is expected to set up a 50 MW AI-GPU cloud data center with a total of 25,000 GPUs at Bharat Future City. During WEF 2025, Blackstone and CtrlS Datacenters were among the companies that signed agreements with the State government for establishing data centres. Similarly, investment proposals of other companies, including ST Telemedia, Tillman Global Holdings, Aurum Equity Partners, Sify Technologies and NTT Data are making steady progress, sources said.
