Topic 1 : Gearing up for change: On IMD and weather analyses having contemporary relevance
Context: India needs region-specific plans to improve climate resilience
Introduction
- Earlier this week, the India Meteorological Department (IMD), entered the 150th year of its existence. While at present, it analyses the entire spectrum of climate and weather, from cyclones to fog, it was conceived, in colonial times, to probe the mysteries of the southwest monsoon.
British administration needs
- The British administration, concerned about revenues, was intimately aware of the influence of the monsoon on harvests and thus extremely invested in determining whether past observations of wind, rain and sunshine could be used to predict future torrents and droughts.
Indian Meteorological Department (IMD)
- The IMD was founded in 1875. It is the National Meteorological Service and the main government organization for all things related to meteorology and related fields.
- The head of the India Meteorological Department is the Director General of Meteorology.
- Six Regional Meteorological Centers with headquarters in Mumbai, Chennai, New Delhi, Calcutta, Nagpur, and Guwahati are overseen by Deputy Director Generals.
- New Delhi serves as its headquarters.
- Currently, the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) oversees IMD.
Monsoon Forecasting
- In the years since then, the IMD has collected gargantuan stores of meteorological data that underlie its forecasts of the monsoon.
- One such analysis of this data by researchers at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) examines monsoon trends at the sub-divisional (tehsil) level, from 1982-2022.
- This finds that monsoon rainfall is increasing in more than half, or 55%, of India’s roughly 4,400 tehsils.
- About 11% of them saw decreasing rainfall. In those tehsils, about 68% experienced reduced rainfall in all four monsoon months, while 87% showed a decline during the June and July -- crucial for the sowing of kharif crops.
- Most of these tehsils are in the Indo-Gangetic plains, which contribute to more than half of India’s agricultural production, northeastern India, and the Indian Himalayan region.
- The study also found that 30% of India’s districts witnessed several years of deficient rainfall years and 38% many years of excessive rainfall.
- Some tehsils in Rajasthan, Gujarat, central Maharashtra, and parts of Tamil Nadu that historically were dry were also getting wetter.
- There were also changes underway in the northeast monsoon, which sets in during October, November and December but primarily impacts peninsular India.
- The northeast monsoon rain has increased by more than 10% in the past decade (2012-2022) in approximately 80% of tehsils in Tamil Nadu, 44% in Telangana, and 39% in Andhra Pradesh, respectively.
- The southwest monsoon accounts for nearly 76% of India’s annual rainfall, with about 11% from the north-east monsoon.
- That India’s monsoons are increasingly prone to long, dry spells and punctuated by torrential wet spells is well documented though how much of it can be explained by natural variability and how much from global warming is an active area of research.
Conclusion
While revenue extraction guided colonial interest in weather at the regional levels, such analyses have a new, contemporary relevance. This is to make region-specific plans to improve climate resilience and channel necessary funds and resources. Prioritising regional and sub-district forecasts over national ones, would be a commendable step forward by the government.
Topic 2 : A case of established law lagging behind new tech
Context: The New York Times suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement undoubtedly opens up a new legal frontier.
Introduction
- In what could be one of the most important lawsuits of our time, The New York Times (NYT) sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The IT industry was shaken recently by the brief ousting and swift reinstatement of OpenAI’s outspoken chief executive officer, Sam Altman, but the fierce conflict between the providers of information used to train Artificial Intelligence systems and the operators went unaddressed.
The NYT’s concerns, the counter
- The NYT claimed that these companies use information from multiple sources to develop AI products. However, they give The NYT content special emphasis and “seek to free-ride on the Times’s massive investment in journalism” without permission or payment.
- This reduces readers’ perceived need to visit the Times website, potentially reducing advertising and subscription revenue.
- Should AI models be allowed to use copyrighted material for training? | The Hindu parley podcast
- Examples of many ChatGPT and Bing Chat (Copilot) outputs were provided, which were almost verbatim copies of The NYT articles with no attribution.
- The Times claimed that although it had contacted these companies, talks to find “an amicable resolution” had come to a standstill.
- The complaint also addressed the problem of AI “hallucinations”, in which incorrect material is mistakenly credited to The Times.
- Furthermore, it wanted that any chatbot models and training data utilising Times copyrighted content be destroyed.
Other cases
- Even earlier, lawsuits were brought against AI services for using unpaid web content scraping. Several authors, including George Martin, Jonathan Franzen, and John Grisham, sued a few GenAI companies, alleging “systematic theft on a mass scale”.
- Philip Pullman and Margaret Atwood have signed an open letter demanding payment for the use of their works by AI companies. Alleging code misuse in Copilot training, some IT professionals have sued OpenAI, Microsoft, and GitHub. Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt were sued by visual artists for infringement of their copyrights. Getty Images also sued Stability AI.
- Universal Music Group urged Spotify and Apple Music to prevent scraping its material to train AI bots to make new songs. And so forth. But it is the first instance of a U.S. media house of significance suing Big Tech for such copyright infringement. However, its scope goes beyond the copyright dispute.
- The U.S. Supreme Court declined to revive a challenge to Google’s digital library of millions of books seven years ago. The Times, however, has drawn comparisons between its move and a copyright lawsuit that dates back more than 20 years against Napster, in which record companies accused the file-sharing service of using their content unlawfully.
- In this GenAI era, the current lawsuit undoubtedly opens up a new legal frontier. It may redefine legal contours around intellectual property rights in the U.S. and establish global precedents at a time when most regulatory frameworks, including those in India, are falling behind.
- “It is certainly a very important case... We should all stay tuned,” stated Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
- An epic battle pits push-button information generated by AI against labour-intensive human newsgathering. From a legal perspective, it is a classic case of established law lagging behind new technology.
- The victory of Big Tech might deter human content producers. However, if The NYT prevails, GenAI companies might be required to compensate content producers for their use, which would significantly increase the cost of GenAI models.
- Interestingly, the U.S. Copyright Office received a comment from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in October stating that exposing AI companies to copyright liabilities will “either kill or significantly hamper their development”.
- Therefore, a win by The NYT might accomplish what legislators around the world are trying to do: somewhat curb the AI genie. The ball is rolling, though. Apple has recently floated multiyear deals to licence the news story archives for at least $50 million.
- OpenAI has agreements with Associated Press and Axel Springer for the sharing of their material with ChatGPT.
On Napster
- Let us revisit the Napster case. The record companies won; Napster quickly vanished. Even so, the industry has been significantly impacted. Publishers such as The NYT certainly recognise, they will have to embrace AI as the “future”.
- All they might want is to ensure that their business model is not destroyed and that they receive proper compensation. This case may very well be settled out of court; the lawsuit may orchestrate that process. Who knows?
Way forward
- Nevertheless, the resolution of this titanic legal dispute, if done by a court, could significantly shape GenAI’s future worldwide.
- Data is essential for the training of GenAIs. Copyright laws, mostly dating back to the printing press, were not designed to cover LLMs such as ChatGPT. Notwithstanding, it is necessary for the courts and/or legislatures to evolve the laws to account for the constantly changing situation.