Pioneer in short
India, France to hold defence talks
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will hold talks with his French counterpart Catherine Vautrin in Bengaluru on February 17, with some key outcomes expected from the bilateral dialogue to boost defence cooperation. A defence cooperation agreement is expected to be renewed for another 10 years, with an MoU on joint venture for “manufacturing of Hammer missiles” likely to be signed at the meeting in the presence of both the ministers, the Defence Ministry said on Sunday. “The two ministers are also expected to witness the virtual inauguration of the H125 Light Utility Helicopter Final Assembly of Tata Airbus by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron at Vemagal in Karnataka,” it said in a statement. Singh will co-chair the sixth India-France Annual Defence Dialogue with Minister of the Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs of France, Catherine Vautrin, in Bengaluru on February 17, the ministry said. The meeting will review the entire gamut of bilateral defence cooperation, with a focus on expanding industrial collaboration, officials said.
Indian student found dead in US
A 22-year-old Indian postgraduate student who went missing in the US less than a week ago has been found dead, the Indian mission has said. Saketh Sreenivasaiah, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, hailing from Karnataka, had been missing since Monday. In an X post on Saturday (local time), the Indian Consulate in San Francisco confirmed the recovery of his body.
The hidden energy cost of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence has slipped quietly into everyday life. We don’t just use AI anymore, we encounter it constantly. It appears when we search online, shop, navigate traffic, or let software autocomplete our thoughts. Even when we are not consciously engaging with AI, it is already working in the background. There is no doubt that AI holds enormous promise. It can improve productivity, help solve complex problems, and entertain us. I am not an AI skeptic. But the speed at which AI is being adopted is a near-term consequence that deserves far more attention: electricity demand. Data centers, the physical backbone of AI, consume vast amounts of power. According to research by the Berkeley National Laboratory, US data centers used roughly 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023. That is comparable to the annual electricity use of around 16 million average American households, roughly the combined total of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. What is more concerning is the trajectory. India sits at an interesting and often overlooked intersection in this conversation.
