Mint Primer

An Indian avatar is in the world’s first AI beauty pageant shortlist, where two of the four judges are also AI-powered. Mint explores the pros and cons of AI’s growing influence, from AI CEOs and assistants to realistic AI deepfakes and voice clones.

N. Chandrababu Naidu’s fourth term as chief minister of Andhra Pradesh could be his most difficult yet as he inherits a financially broke and industrially ignored state. Mint delves into the challenges the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader faces this time around

We all love shopping online. The fallout? Many malls, beyond the top graded ones, have closed. However, developers continue to be bullish on retail spaces, numbers released this month by JLL India, a property advisory, show.

Last week, Nvidia briefly overtook Apple to become the second most valuable company in the world at $3.01 trillion. Even as Nvidia shareholders and its chief executive rejoiced, analysts and watchers of the company claimed the future may not be so easy.

After two terms of absolute majority, the Indian electorate has given a fractured mandate to the Narendra Modi-led BJP. The era of coalition politics is back with a bang. Does that also mean an end to the promise of big-ticket reforms?

The BJP-led NDA scored a victory in the Lok Sabha polls, but the saffron party was unable to secure a simple majority on its own. The age of coalition politics is back and this queers the pitch for the market in the short term. Mint explains why.

The 2024 elections have thrown up a major surprise. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was supposed to have swept the polls. Instead, it has fallen short of a majority. It now needs to form a government with its partners in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). In short, the era of coalition politics is back in India. Here are some of the main takeaways

Artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) are advancing at an incredible pace, but we are unable to understand how they make decisions, so they are called ‘black boxes’. Researchers say they are now able to peek under the AI hood. Will this make AI models safer?

A Deloitte report recently highlighted a 33% reduction in campus placement budgets for 2023-24 when compared with the year before. This is the first time projected salaries of MBA graduates have actually dropped.

At 2.30pm on Wednesday, the NCR’s temperature hit a shocking 52.3 degrees Celsius, its hottest day ever. Extreme hot weather is increasing both in duration and intensity. let's take a look at heatwaves, what causes them and how prepared we are to deal with this weather event.

Despite a record harvest, wheat prices are on the rise. That’s because of lower production in some states, which in turn means the Centre is unlikely to meet its purchase target. Will prices rise further, and push India to allow imports, currently banned?

India has built highways at a frenetic clip over the past decade. Now there are signs that the pace may have peaked in 2023-24 and it may even fall in the current fiscal year. Mint explores the reasons for this and whether this is a temporary blip or long-term in nature.

Tune in to the latest episode to know that now users are getting comfortable with AI models and chatbots, the next step is to improve user experience. But how? The answer lies in using many specialist bots, rather than getting one to do all the jobs from banking to customer care to teaching.

A sizzling heat wave is stretching India’s power infrastructure. In fact, the power deficit in June is projected to be the highest in 14 years. Mint looks at the factors causing it, steps the government has taken, and whether a crisis can be avoided this time around.

A big casualty of the ongoing housing boom, ironically, has been affordable homes, whose supply and sales have been shrinking. By contrast, the luxury homes segment has expanded. Can the budget home dream be revived?

Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, 63, and foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, 60, were among nine people killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday. Mint looks at the implications of Raisi’s death for India and the wider region.

Google’s long-term experiment to create a science fiction-like 3D, holographic ultra-realistic display is now a real product. After many failures, is Silicon Valley’s quest to build screens that look like teleportation portals finally nearing promise?

The Supreme Court has exempted lawyers from the purview of the Consumer Protection Act. This sets the stage for doctors to get a similar exemption. Mint looks at what this ruling means for consumers and what redressal options we now have for poor service.

A violent solar flare has reminded us just what changes in the sun’s surface conditions can do to us. Strong solar storms can bring down power infrastructure, communications and disrupt navigation—facets through which the modern world functions.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has managed to keep the buzz going around the release of a generative pre-trained transformer (GPT)-5 and a ChatGPT search engine by calling previous versions “dumb”. Here’s why enterprises would do well to seek alternatives.

Regulatory action in Singapore and Hong Kong on two of India’s biggest spice brands—MDH and Everest—for alleged chemical contamination has turned the heat on spice exports. Mint looks at the issue and analyses what it could mean for the $4-billion export sector.

New RBI draft guidelines on project loans are aimed at bringing credit discipline and ensuring only serious players participate. But since their release last week, shares of PSU banks and infra NBFCs have tanked. And bankers are upset.

The dollar is having an unusually strong year, gaining against most major currencies. That’s got policymakers from Tokyo to London fretting over its implications for economies. Mint takes a look at one of the most important price signals of the global financial market:

The Humane AI Pin, a voice-controlled personal assistant, was one of Silicon Valley’s most-hyped AI-first products. However, the hype has crashed rather fast. Barring Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, voice interfaces have been tech’s biggest failures.

The frequency and severity of forest fires triggered by climate change are on the rise, the latest being fires that have engulfed 8 of the 17 districts in Uttarakhand. What’s the impact of forest fires and how can they be brought under control?