The Mumbai-Pune Expressway is about to change with the installation of Maharashtra’s first Intelligent Traffic Management System (ITMS). The MSRDC initiative, which is headed by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation, is designed to change the way traffic is controlled and to improve road safety along the expressway.
The Mumbai-Pune Expressway with about 40,000 cars daily and the number of cars increasing to over 60,000 during weekends, is the need of the hour to be modernized in traffic management. The ITMS is slated to be ready for operation by the first week of June and will bring a bunch of advancements.
In the initial phase of deployment, 218 AI-aided CCTV cameras will be installed at 39 gantries covering a 95-kilometer stretch of the expressway. These cameras are not just ordinary surveillance tools, they are the ones capable of detecting 17 different types of traffic offenses. Besides, the number plate recognition technology will be combined with toll booths and cameras, hence the police will be able to issue e-challans at ease.
The facilities for the goods transporters will have weigh-in-motion devices installed at all the expressway entries, so the traffic can be efficiently monitored. Besides, 11 weather monitoring systems will be allocated to the roads to keep the motorists informed about the weather conditions.
The capability of emergency response will be improved, and emergency vehicles such as tow vans, cranes, and ambulances will be fitted with vehicle tracking systems. Variable messaging sign boards that are installed at 23 locations will give the drivers information about the traffic conditions, road closures, and weather forecasts in real-time, thus helping them to make the right choices.
The Superintendent of Highway Traffic Police (Panvel), Tanaji Chikle, pointed out the importance of this new technology in better road management and motorist safety. The ITMS unlike the speed-monitoring CCTVs that only command the motorists to slow down when they are detected, uses proactive measures. Live feeds of vehicles breaking traffic rules will be sent to the toll booths of the coming and the drivers of the violating vehicles will be alerted to enforce discipline.
ITMS will make e-challans issued smoothly, the traffic police will withhold ‘no dues certificates’ for vehicle owners with pending challans. This measure emphasizes the significance of compliance in heavy vehicle registration renewal.
The Mumbai-Pune Expressway is the starting point of the road to the technological development of traffic management, and the plans to implement this system on the Samruddhi Mahamarg, mean that Maharashtra will be another step on the path of road infrastructure development.
Is Your Inbox Safe? AI-Generated Spam Images Invade Facebook and LinkedIn
In the recent past, social media users, such as Casey Morris from the North of Virginia, have observed a strange trend in their feeds. Weird pictures, mostly with strange compositions like Jesus is made of vegetables or emotionally manipulative ones are now appearing more often. The posts posted by Morris have shown that these are not the work of friends and family but are the suggestions of the platforms themselves.
Morris is not the only one who is being subjected to such an influx of weird content. Tech reporters at 404 Media noticed the same thing as other platforms like Threads and LinkedIn: the increase of AI-generated posts on Facebook and other platforms.
The phenomenon is being studied thoroughly and the researchers from Georgetown and Stanford universities have found a serious problem associated with it. A lot of these AI-generated posts, which are posted on Facebook pages that produce content really fast, are connected with spam and scams. These pages, sometimes posting dozens of times a day, are highly engaged, which could be due to the algorithm of the platforms, which creates a lot of visibility for them.
The images produced by AI range from log cabins to grandmas with birthday cakes, but they all share one thing in common: they aren’t existent. Although, some pages are trying to earn money through ads or by spreading the products that do not exist, meanwhile, others are not sure why they are collecting followers.
What are the reasons for the growth of AI-generated content? The increase in the number of posts that are suggested by the social media outlets such as Facebook which now makes up about 30% of the feeds of the users is a major factor. With the evolution of social media, platforms are trying hard to stay at par with the trends that are already popularized by platforms like TikTok. This shift, along with the ease of producing AI-created content, has caused a massive amount of weird and usually scary images.
Brian Penny, a freelance writer who is following AI on Facebook, states that there is a transition from the lightly credible images to the truly strange ones. The main issue for platforms like Facebook and TikTok is the way to tell the real and the AI-generated content. Although the tasks to counter the spam generated by AI have started, the flood of spam has left many users disappointed.
For people such as Katrina McVary and Borys Rzonca, the veritable flood of AI-generated spam is not only irritating; it is also the reason they are leaving the site. Besides the annoyance, some issues are not only about the creation of artificial images but these images affect our view of what is true.
According to Hobey Ford, an expert puppeteer, the widespread use of AI-generated content makes the distinction between reality and fiction shaky and as a result, people will find it more difficult to tell what is real. Nowadays, there is already so much false information, this trend has major problems.
To sum up, the emergence of spam messages generated by AI on social media is not only a minor issue but a manifestation of a larger trend in the way information is spread and received online. The case of the denial of Trump’s contest by the majority of Twitter users is an example of online interactions which are under the threat of becoming uncontrollable and it is the responsibility of both the platforms like Twitter and its users to think of the consequences of this phenomenon to maintain the quality of the discourse on the internet.
Beyond Android 15, What Secret AI Weapon Did Google Reveal at I/O?
Google’s yearly developer conference, Google I/O, demonstrated a whole lot of AI innovations that are going to change the Android experience hugely for its large user base. Considering the fact that billions of active Android users are all over the world, the tech giant seeks to change the way smartphone interactions are done by the use of AI technologies.
Samat, Google’s vice president of Product Management for Android, stressed the start of a long-term project to reinvent the Android consumer experience with AI as its core. This move puts Android at the forefront of AI integration, making it possible for it to surpass Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant integration in Windows 11.
The AI-driven transformation of Android revolves around three key features: The configuration of Circular to Search, the emergence of Gemini as the main AI assistant, and the field testing of the new Gemini Nano model for on-device tasks. Although the previous versions of Android had only limited AI functionalities, the new improvements are designed to make AI features accessible to all Android devices, including mid-range and budget phones.
Google’s approach to AI execution is based on a combination of on-device processing and cloud-based solutions, in this way, it meets the privacy and latency issues. Dave Burke, Google’s vice president for Engineering, stressed the advanced features of the Gemini Nano model which made the boundaries of AI functionality more visible.
The rollout of AI features on Android phones will be done in two ways. Firstly, updates via Google Play services and Play System Updates will activate the new AI functionalities on the devices that are compatible with it. Besides, teaming up with SoC partners is meant to enhance the efficiency of AI models on flagship devices.
On the other hand, Google insists on working together with phone makers so that the Android’s AI improvements can be incorporated into their own designs smoothly. This makes sure that users in various Android ecosystems get the benefits of the latest AI innovations.
An outstanding feature of the AI-powered Android experience is the introduction of Circle to Search which makes the search interactions intuitive through gesture-based input. This feature, first available only for the Galaxy S24 flagship phones of Samsung, shows Google’s dedication to improving the experiences of users in different form factors, including tablets.
The Gemini’s contextual awareness features give the users the ability to receive the personalized help they need and before their requirements are met, they give them relevant suggestions. Whatever the case, be it helping with search queries or clarifying the information from multimedia sources, Gemini is going to make our lives more productive and convenient.
Fundamentally, Google puts first user privacy and the choice in AI adoption. Users can either choose to enable or disable the AI-powered features, hence, the principle of transparency and Google’s AI Principles are observed.
To sum up, Google‘s AI-driven Android upgrades represent a very big step in smartphone innovation, and thus, the advantage to the user. As AI keeps on developing the future of technology, Google still stands at the top and comes up with the most useful solutions that are suitable for the needs of its worldwide users.
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