3,513 students receive degrees at 16th graduation ceremony
In recognition of exceptional academic performance and significant contributions to their respective domains, 48 students were awarded gold medals. Senior faculty members Prof. P Bharani Chandra Kumar and P Shanthi Latha received Best Researcher Awards for their outstanding work.
Delivering the graduation day address, Bosch Global Software Technologies R&D centre head and vice president Naveed Narayan said the young generation has immense potential to create new business opportunities using Artificial Intelligence (AI). He emphasised that the entire world is now looking towards India for solutions to complex problems, and it is the responsibility of the youth to recognise this and contribute to building a new India. GITAM president and Visakhapatnam Parliament Member M Sribharath reiterated the institution's commitment towards ethics and values, which serve to inspire the younger generation. Appreciating the students for their achievements, he urged them to contribute back to society as they progress in life. While acknowledging concerns about job losses due to AI, he assured that new opportunities would emerge, and advised students to shift their mindset from seeking long-term job security to becoming solution providers and job creators.
The institution's Pro Vice-Chancellor Y Gouthama Rao shared insights into its growth. He highlighted the faculty's achievements, stating that they are actively involved in 25 major research projects and have produced 208 patents. The institution's vice-president M Gangadhara Rao, secretary M.Bharadwaja, Vice-Chancellor Errol D'Souza, Registrar D Gunasekharan, deans, directors and governing body members participated in the ceremony.
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Indian Express
40 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Nine-year-old had daily blackouts for 5 months: How AI tool helped doctors diagnose a rare condition in record time
For five months, nine-year-old Manoj (name changed) would faint every day. Every single day, without so much as a warning, the boy would press his ears, complain of a strange sensation, pain and then collapse. His father, a carpenter in Gurugram, skipped work on most days to monitor his son's sudden attacks. 'Every time he touched his ears, my heart would stop. I knew what was coming next,' he says. Doctor after doctor would attempt a diagnosis but the fainting spells would not stop. Till they used AI to zero in on a rare neurological condition that troubled the boy. 'With AI helping us save time by going through every research and therapy on his condition, we were able to treat him. Today the boy has recovered, is back to school, sports and leading a normal life like his peers,' says Dr Shashidhar TB, senior consultant, ENT, head and neck surgeon at Artemis Hospital, Gurugram. WHY DIAGNOSIS WAS COMPLICATED Sensing a neurological problem, the family consulted neurologists everywhere who did a battery of tests. Some of them suspected epilepsy, psychiatric conditions, and even malingering, attributing it to school phobia. But no medication worked. 'When he came to us, everything had already been tried. Anti-epileptic medications, psychological counseling, multiple specialist consultations — nothing worked. The child's condition was deteriorating, he was missing school for months and the family was at their breaking point,' says Dr Shashidhar. Manoj's symptoms were variable. Apart from fainting, he complained of headache, speech difficulties and severe aches in the ear. The team monitored his heart rate, sleep and other parameters. Video recordings of episodes were done to understand the sequence of each episode. All tests were analysed to calculate statistical possibilities of different diagnosis. Nothing definitive emerged. That's when Dr Shashidhar went back to good old history-taking. 'I found that four months before the child experienced fainting bouts, he had viral fever and a severe cold. An MRI showed an infection in the inner ear (that's why the boy was complaining of sharp pain), which plays a crucial role in balance and spatial awareness. Dysfunction in this system, which can be caused by ear infections, can lead to a type of migraine characterised by vertigo, dizziness and headache.' 'DOCTOR, YOUR FACE IS LOOKING LIKE A DOG' It was not any migraine but a rare one. Dr Shashidhar's suspicions arose when the boy repeatedly told him that he saw not him, but the face of a dog. 'Migraines affecting the brainstem (also known as basilar-type migraines), can cause visual hallucinations. These hallucinations can be simple when patients see flickering lights or geometric patterns, or complex, when patients see fully formed images of people, animals, or objects on whoever is in front of them. Children fall unconscious,' says Dr Shashidhar. HOW AI TOOLS HELPED Solving such complex migraine cases involves digging through countless research papers, a process that's time-consuming and often overwhelming. 'That's when we decided to speed things up by using AI tools like Glass Health and Perplexity AI. These give referenced, reliable answers, cutting down hours of literature search to minutes, without the usual hallucinated nonsense,' says Dr Shashidhar. Dr Trisha Srivastava fed Manoj's complete medical history, symptoms and test results into specialised AI diagnostic platforms. 'Within minutes, these systems analysed patterns that human doctors might miss, comparing the case against millions of medical records worldwide and giving a probability-based diagnosis,' she says. Among four possible diagnoses, it calculated a high probability for basilar artery migraine, something that Dr Shashidhar had suspected. 'Basilar migraine is so rare that many doctors go their entire careers without seeing a case. The AI's ability to recognise this pattern from subtle clues — the ear sensations, the specific type of headache, the brief visual disturbances — was effective enough,' Dr Shashidhar explains. THE TREATMENT The team immediately started Manoj on targeted migraine therapy. The results were nothing short of miraculous. Within a week, the daily episodes that had tormented the boy for five months completely stopped. A month later, he continues to be symptom-free. 'This case demonstrates the transformative power of AI in modern medicine. Instead of subjecting patients to months of trial-and-error treatments, AI can help us rapidly narrow down diagnoses, especially for rare conditions that might otherwise go unrecognised,' says Dr Srivastava. Manoj's father is relieved as he can go back to work without fear and anxiety. 'My son is playing, studying and being a normal child again. We have got our life back,' he says. As medical AI continues to evolve, cases like these highlight its potential in complex diagnostic scenarios where human pattern recognition reaches its limits. It can help with treating rare diseases that much more effectively.
Mint
an hour ago
- Mint
Is it still Disney magic if it's AI?
When Disney began working on a new, live-action version of its hit cartoon 'Moana," executives started to ponder whether they should clone its star, Dwayne Johnson. The actor was reprising his role in the movie as Maui, a barrel-chested demigod, but for certain days on set, Disney had a plan in place that wouldn't require Johnson to be there at all. Under the plan they devised, Johnson's similarly buff cousin Tanoai Reed—who is 6-foot-3 and 250 pounds—would fill in as a body double for a small number of shots. Disney would work with AI company Metaphysic to create deepfakes of Johnson's face that could be layered on top of Reed's performance in the footage—a 'digital double" that effectively allowed Johnson to be in two places at once. What happened next was evidence that Hollywood's much-discussed, and much-feared, AI revolution won't be an overnight robot takeover. Johnson approved the plan, but the use of a new technology had Disney attorneys hammering out details over how it could be deployed, what security precautions would protect the data and a host of other concerns. They also worried that the studio ultimately couldn't claim ownership over every element of the film if AI generated parts of it, people involved in the negotiations said. Disney and Metaphysic spent 18 months negotiating on and off over the terms of the contract and work on the digital double. But none of the footage will be in the final film when it's released next summer. A deepfake Dwayne Johnson is just one part of a broader technological earthquake hitting Hollywood. Studios are scrambling to figure out simultaneously how to use AI in the filmmaking process and how to protect themselves against it. While executives see a future where the technology shaves tens of millions of dollars off a movie's budget, they are grappling with a present filled with legal uncertainty, fan backlash and a wariness toward embracing tools that some in Silicon Valley view as their next-century replacement. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is surveying members on how they use the technology. Studio chiefs are shutting down efforts to experiment for fear of angering show-business unions on the eve of another contract negotiation. And no studio stands to gain or lose more in the outcome than Disney—the home of Donald Duck, Belle, Buzz Lightyear and Stitch, among countless others—which has churned out some of the most valuable, and protected, creative works in the world over the past century. Interviews with more than 20 current and former employees and partners present an entertainment giant torn between the inevitability of AI's advance and concerns about how to use it. Progress has at times been slowed by bureaucracy and hand-wringing over the company's social contract with its fans, not to mention its legal contract with unions representing actors, writers and other creative partners. The company's early steps have included discussions about adding features within its Disney+ streaming service to enable subscribers to create their own clips of Disney shows and allowing gamers to interact with an AI-generated Darth Vader in Fortnite. Disney took a $1.5 billion stake in Fortnite's owner, Epic Games, last year. Some of its efforts to use AI in movies have gone nowhere. Meanwhile, Disney's legal teams remain fiercely protective of the studio's characters and wary of any moves internally or by third parties that could harm its brand, leading the company to sue one AI provider in June. And Disney employees who want to feed corporate information into generative AI tools for company business must first seek approval from an AI committee. (Over the past several months, the company has gotten response times to such requests down to 48 hours, according to a person familiar with the situation.) For Disney, protecting its characters and stories while also embracing new AI technology is key. 'We have been around for 100 years and we intend to be around for the next 100 years," said the company's legal chief, Horacio Gutierrez, in an interview. 'AI will be transformative, but it doesn't need to be lawless." It's just one of the challenges facing Chief Executive Bob Iger, who is expected to name a successor in early 2026 after nearly 20 years at the helm. He is under tremendous pressure to reduce costs amid declines in movie theater attendance and increases in people canceling their cable subscriptions. He has recently had to fend off criticism that his company has had creative challenges, and has focused too much on recycling old properties. Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger in July. Concerns about bad publicity were a big reason that Disney scrapped a plan to use AI in 'Tron: Ares"—a movie set for release in October about an AI-generated soldier entering the real world. Since the movie is about artificial intelligence, executives pitched the idea of actually incorporating AI into one of the characters in the sequel to the 1980s hit movie 'Tron" as a buzzy marketing strategy, according to people familiar with the matter. A writer would provide context on the animated character—a sidekick to Jeff Bridges' lead role named Bit—to a generative AI program. Then on screen, the AI program, voiced by an actor, would respond to questions as Bit as cameras rolled. But with negotiations with unions representing writers and actors over contracts happening at the same time, Disney dismissed the idea, and executives internally were told that the company couldn't risk the bad publicity, the people said. Iger and Gutierrez have met with White House officials in recent months to discuss worries about AI models infringing on the company's intellectual property and using the studio's characters in inappropriate ways, according to people familiar with the discussions. Disney is up against companies like OpenAI and Google, which argue that having access to copyrighted materials as they train their models is crucial to compete in the AI race with China, which carries national security implications. In June, Disney and Comcast's Universal took their most drastic step yet toward protecting their creative works, suing AI provider Midjourney for allegedly making copies of their copyrighted properties. 'Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism," the companies said in its complaint filed in June. Midjourney hasn't responded to the suit. The lawsuit is seen by Disney's competitors as the strongest effort yet to establish a legal framework for AI issues. Some former employees and business partners who go toe-to-toe with Disney over use of its characters jokingly refer to the company as 'the largest law firm in California." Disney said it is balancing the desire by its executives to move quickly on AI with the need to protect its characters. 'Our job is to enable our creators to use the best AI tools available without compromising the company long term," Gutierrez said. AI is a new battleground for an entertainment company that spent the past decade weathering competition from Silicon Valley in the form of streaming rivals at Apple and Amazon, and the gravitational pull of eyeballs toward Google's YouTube. Google, OpenAI and others now offer video, photo and sound editing tools that let fans be their own producers, with the ability to manipulate characters and images at will. That's tough for a company that controls its IP as tightly as Disney, longtime executives said. In the suit filed against Midjourney, Disney and Universal included AI-generated images of some of their most popular characters, including the Minions and Darth Vader. Executives are keenly aware of how fast AI is advancing. At Disney's annual management retreat in Orlando earlier this year, Rob Bredow, a senior vice president at Disney's Lucasfilm, gave a presentation showing the rapid advances of generative AI tools, some of which can generate images and scenes that, to the casual eye, appear as good as professional productions. Bredow showed clips an artist created depicting a droid landing on a planet and the creatures it saw. Bredow explained the artist had first created the clips in the fall, and then again just a few months later, and marveled at the leap in quality of the videos, according to a person at the meeting. Historically, Disney has been reluctant to allow its characters to mingle on consumer goods it manufactures, let alone mix and match in ways that AI tools encourage. When princesses like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are featured on the same product, like a lunchbox or poster, designers must ensure their gazes are fixed in different directions, so that the characters are all plausibly living in their own 'universe." It took years for the company to allow Disney's characters from different universes—such as C-3PO and Ariel from 'The Little Mermaid"—to interact with each other in videogames. Disney's concerns about control of its characters and stories have been a point of debate in its recent work with Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, with tens of millions of monthly active users. Disney sees gaming as an important avenue for building future fandom. Fortnite collapses franchises into one storytelling universe—where Batman can coexist with Lara Croft and Frankenstein's Bride. Disney is planning its own world (internally code-named 'Bulldog") connected to Fortnite where gamers can interact with characters including Marvel superheroes and 'Avatar" creatures, people familiar with the plans said. Some Epic executives have complained about the slow pace of the decision-making at Disney, with signoffs needed from so many different divisions, said people familiar with the situation. And an experiment to allow gamers to interact with an AI-generated Darth Vader was fraught. Within minutes of launching the AI bot, gamers had figured out a way to make it curse in James Earl Jones's signature baritone. Epic fixed the workaround within 30 minutes. Ten million players spoke with Vader at least once, according to Epic. The joint venture is being overseen by Josh D'Amaro, head of Disney's parks and resorts, who is on a shortlist of internal candidates to succeed Iger. D'Amaro has made it a point to spend time with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, periodically visiting with him in Cary, N.C., where Epic is based, and going on hikes together, according to one of the people. Some Disney executives have raised concerns ahead of the project's launch, anticipated for fall 2026 at the earliest, about who owns fan creations based on Disney characters, said one of the people. For example, if a Fortnite gamer creates a Darth Vader and Spider-Man dance that goes viral on YouTube, who owns that dance? Those ownership concerns extend to major motion pictures across Hollywood. On a typical visual-effects contract, the company creating the effects gives ownership of the material to the studio. But similarly transferring ownership of AI-generated work isn't so seamless, lawyers said. In the absence of any legal precedent, studios fear a future in which they don't own every element of a finished film, and no studio attorney wants to be the one to unwittingly let that happen. The stakes are high for a company with as many well-known characters as Disney, which Gutierrez said doesn't want AI firms to pay for use of its characters and then assume free rein. 'We want Darth Vader just for Disney—we are not interested in surrendering control of our characters and IP to others in exchange for a check," Gutierrez said. In some corners, the technology is embraced as a lower-cost, more efficient tool. On Amazon's 'House of David," an animated show about the biblical figure, creator Jon Erwin has boasted of the technology's godlike assistance in creating whole sequences of certain episodes. Lionsgate, the studio behind the John Wick franchise, last year announced a licensing deal with generative AI company Runway in exchange for a custom-built AI model it can use for production. A24, the studio behind 'Everything Everywhere All at Once," was among the first studios to use Runway's AI and has hired a former expert from Adobe to help craft its strategy. Some in the industry are scared of the technology in a way enthusiasts criticize as naive. On some sets, visual-effects crews are warned on their first day to not even mention the term 'AI." Actors who are scanned head-to-toe for digital double creation can have a representative from the Screen Actors Guild with them during the process. Hovering over any major studio decision regarding the technology: contract talks with the Screen Actors Guild set to resume next year. Executives are reluctant to make any announcement that might anger the union or be reversed under the new contract's terms. The 2024 movie 'Here," a Sony release that told a story spanning decades, used generative AI to de-age stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright—and the software allowed them to see the footage of their younger selves instantaneously. When it came time to promote the film, producers grew concerned about potential pushback to having an A-list name like Hanks speak about the AI technology used in its making, a person involved in the film said. Hanks joked about those concerns during an appearance on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," asking the house band to play a foreboding sequence of notes any time he used the term AI. 'Everybody gets scared," he said. Disney's own history speaks to how studios have navigated technological crossroads before. When Disney hired Pixar to produce a handful of graphic images for its 1989 hit 'The Little Mermaid," executives kept the incorporation a secret, fearing backlash from fans if they learned that not every frame of the animated film had been hand-drawn. Such knowledge, executives feared, might 'take away the magic." Write to Jessica Toonkel at and Erich Schwartzel at
Hans India
an hour ago
- Hans India
TTD's move to use AI for handling crowd at Tirumala sparks debate
Tirupati: Artificial Intelligence, the overarching buzzword of the IT sector has been working wonders in multiple fields as a disruptive set of technologies that can mimic and, at times, outdo human intelligence. What if its potential is explored in crowd management and reducing 'darshan' time to less than two hours at Tirumala, where except for VIPs and big donors, darshan of Lord Venkateswara takes 8-12 hours on 'normal' days and even 24 plus hours on auspicious days for the common people? However, a proposal of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) to integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) with its crowd management systems has sparked a spirited debate, with former TTD Executive Officer and IAS officer (retd) LV Subramanyam panning the proposal as 'unrealistic' and 'impractical' and TTD Board Chairman BR Naidu scotching 'premature' criticism them as 'misleading and misinformed'. Even otherwise, the TTD's move, aimed at leveraging technology for cutting down agonisingly long wait times for darshan at the world-renowned Tirumala temple, has become a flashpoint between those advocating progressive tech adaptation and those playing safe with traditional administrative wisdom. Speaking to the media in Tirumala on Sunday, Subramanyam questioned the feasibility of providing darshan within one or two hours through AI intervention. Citing practical limitations such as space constraints and existing procedural matters, he suggested that TTD would do well to drop the plan. 'It is unrealistic to expect lakhs of devotees to be managed smoothly with technology alone. These expectations are misplaced and may lead to more frustration,' he warned. Subramanyam said he had overheard devotees discussing the AI integration proposal and expressing mixed feelings. He felt that while the intention behind the move was to ease the pilgrimage experience, the on-ground realities make such tech-driven timelines impractical. The former EO further suggested that funds earmarked for the project could be better utilised in enhancing basic amenities for pilgrims. 'Investing in unproven technology in the name of AI does not make sense when pilgrims are still dealing with inadequate facilities. Enhancing comfort and infrastructure should take precedence over ambitious tech experiments', he averred. Responding strongly to these remarks, TTD Chairman BR Naidu defended the AI initiative, stating that the criticism was both premature and misinformed. He clarified that certain AI-based systems were being developed in partnership with tech giants like Google and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS); and more importantly, at no cost to the TTD, thanks to donor support. 'It is unfortunate that such misleading statements are coming from someone who once held a key administrative role in TTD,' Naidu remarked. Highlighting the goals of the AI system, Naidu said the focus was solely on streamlining queue management and reducing waiting times in the Vaikuntam queue complex, where devotees often spend several hours — sometimes even days — waiting for darshan. 'This technology will not touch the sanctity of temple rituals or religious practices. It is meant to enhance the devotee experience, not alter temple traditions,' he clarified. Naidu asserted that in an era where technology is transforming systems across the globe, TTD's decision to explore AI for crowd control was not only logical but also necessary. Despite the controversy, TTD remains firm on its position and continues to assess the technical feasibility of the AI initiative. With lakhs of devotees thronging Tirumala every month, the temple board believes that leveraging technology is essential to ease congestion and improve overall crowd management.
