Author: Malavika Madgula

An image of Jesus and half a shrimp fused together, a SpaceX UFO craft, tiny children baking impossibly perfect cakes, and well-written articles outlining problems and magical solutions by the end of them. No, you don’t need to imagine them; these images, texts, and media are already available on the internet. Welcome to the world of “Slop,” which is akin to spam and can be described as scammy, low-quality, and dubious garbage generated by AI (artificial intelligence). It encompasses a broad term and refers to unwanted, shoddy AI content in books, art, social media, and, increasingly, internet search results. It’s…

2024 will be known for many things, one of which is the rise of crypto gaming. Blending blockchain technology with interactive entertainment, crypto gaming became a sensation across the globe. In fact, they could very well be hailed as the disruptors of 2024’s crypto industry, with games like Hamster Combat – yes, you read that right – amassing millions of fans across the globe. If you’ve heard terms like blockchain gaming and NFT games, they all, including crypto gaming, fall under the umbrella of play-to-earn games. Crypto games can store data and pay players as they use smart contracts and…

Building a robot takes boatloads of technical skills, a whole lot of time, the right materials, of course – and maybe a little bit of organic life, maybe? Decades of science fiction have shaped our ideas of robots being non-biological entities. Think of batteries as the hearts, metal as the bones, and gears, pistons, and motors as the muscles. However, all those perceptions went flying out of the window when The Terminator was released in 1984, for there was living tissue on the outside in the form of a muscular human male that covered a metal endoskeleton. It might be…

Staying anonymous in today’s hyper-digital world is as easy as it is difficult. In the world of cryptocurrency, it’s all the more challenging, with KYC (Know Your Customer) norms in play. As crypto adoption rises across the globe, quality crypto wallets have transformed into one of the most integral requirements for an investor. Like cryptocurrencies, wallets have also gone from simply being storage avenues for tokens to comprehensive ecosystems, complete with selling and buying capabilities. As with any other form of currency, privacy, and security are paramount when it involves handling digital funds. This is where anonymous crypto wallets come…

If the cryptocurrency world were to have just one word for 2024, we’re sure everyone would agree on one and only one thing: memecoin. In 2023, what occupied just 8.32% of investor mindshare jumped to a cool 31% in 2024. In fact, the hashtag “#memecoin” has been used nearly 1.2 million times on X (formerly Twitter) as of November 2024. So, what is this trendy buzzword? This crypto craze is a celebration of the silliness of digital assets that have sprung from the transience of social media. The most well-known is Elon Musk’s favourite dogecoin, which is based on an…

In season 6 of the long-running TV series Friends, one character tells the other that humanity will be able to download their memories and thoughts onto computers by 2030, living forever as machines. More recently, the much-beloved Black Mirror season 3 episode “San Junipero” showcased a simulated reality where the dead are “alive” and the elderly “visit” their younger selves in a time period of their choosing. The Friends episode, which aired in 1999-2000, might have sounded sci-fi, but we’re not so sure anymore. In fact, American computer scientist, futurist, and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil believes that humanity will be able…

Even as I write this article, Bitcoin has already made history by reaching a new all-time high of USD 106,000, breaking its previous high that it reached on December 5th, 2024. Clearly, Bitcoin’s position in the fast-changing cryptocurrency world is being cemented like that of no other cryptocurrency. One of the factors being attributed to the crypto’s phenomenal surge to the USD 100K mark is the “Bitcoin Halving” event, which took place in April 2024. Basically, Bitcoin Halving, which takes place once every four years, slashes the rate of creation of new coins, often boosting their price. As the Bitcoin…

American computer scientist and professor Alan Perlis famously said that a year spent in AI (artificial intelligence) was enough to make one believe in God… It might be a little too (uncomfortably) close to the truth, considering that now questions are arising about the societal and ethical implications of AI. However, there is no denying that AI also has the potential to transform healthcare and well-being. We are talking specifically about the Safe Delivery App, a training and learning tool and a job aid, all combined into one, for midwives and other healthcare professionals. Backstory A major chunk of all…

What if Rick and Evelyn from the “Mummy” movie series or Indiana Jones had been able to use artificial intelligence (AI)? We imagine they would have spent a lot less time struggling to decipher texts, quickening their pace of discovering tombs, ancient sites, and whatnot… What if we were to tell you that AI is now being deployed to unearth buried truths and hidden secrets? For instance, a University of Basel team has been conducting landscape research, in collaboration with the Graubünden Archaeological Service, in the Crap Ses area of Switzerland since 2021. The objective? To unearth a Roman battlefield…

Technology and nature make for strange bedfellows, each seemingly divergent with respect to the other. However, nature conservationists have been employing technology to aid their vital work for a long time now… In 2022, a Wildlabs.net report identified artificial intelligence (AI) as one of the top three emerging technologies in the field of wildlife conservation, helping protect species globally. It might seemingly look like techno-solutionism, but its timing could not be better. We are in a very crucial era, facing increasingly complex ecological challenges to protect our biocultural heritage and the natural world. Species Distribution and Conservation Some of the…