world is changing. It's an update on the orthodox view of the war with Rabbi Itzel Krasynchansky. Welcome to the show, Rabbi. Thank you, Jay. Always a pleasure to be here. Well, let's talk about Chabad at first. You know, Chabad was kind enough, generous enough to help some of the families in Israel come to the Washington rally last week. Can you talk about that? Yes. So, yeah, Chabad in Israel, which is a very large presence in Israel. There's even a whole village called Kvar Chabad, the village of Chabad. It was established shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel. But Chabad has chapters and centers and synagogues all throughout the country. And Chabad also, unfortunately, has whole staff that deals with terror victims and throughout all the wars and their families and helps them, you know, pick up the pieces and helps them in a myriad of ways. So now, just last week, Chabad arranged for the families of the hostages who are in Gaza, 240 hostages or so. So there was about a couple hundred people that were flown in from Israel to participate in the rally that took place last week in Washington, D.C. More than just the rally, they arranged for them to meet with congressmen and senators and politicians who are in Washington and to plead their case and to make them aware of their plight, the plight of their loved ones.  And he was not a towering spiritual figure. And people come to his resting place from all over the world and pray and they were there. And I was in New York last week myself. I did not go to the rally. I flew back that day, but Pearl actually did go to the rally. And she can tell us about it because she shows up soon. But I was there when they pulled up to the Rebbe's grave site, the holy place, a couple of chartered buses, and there were lots and lots of people. The word got out that they were coming and there were lots of people there welcoming them very, very warmly and singing and embracing them and basically doing what we can to ease their unbelievable suffering, or hard to imagine suffering. A lot of people in the community feel that the hostages should, that the war has to be won before the hostages will be released. But Hamas is playing with us and all these quote negotiations aren't going to go anywhere. And this is a problem because if you approach Joe Biden and say, do something to release the hostages, then maybe really nothing that he can do. Now, in the paper this morning, there was a report that both Hamas and the Israeli spelled that we were closer to a release of some hostages. I don't know what the sticking points are. They've been sticking points for weeks. But my question to you is that Hamas is terrorists. Hamas is playing the hostages. They took the hostages for some strategic reasons and psychological reasons. Can we ever get them out without conceding way too much in the past when this has happened? Israel has conceded things and I'm not sure that they're going to be able to cut a deal. What do you think? I don't know, to be honest with you, this is a very, very, very complicated situation if Israel didn't care for each individual person that's hosted. It's almost like natural and it's within the teachings of Judaism and it's part of our DNA to care for each other. Therefore, Israel has no choice but has to figure out ways to save the hostages. That has to be balanced against the, like you mentioned, the absolute imperative need to wipe out the terrorists, to wipe out Hamas once and for all as the West did to the Nazis during World War II. It's almost like an impossible, to how to strike a balance. Israel is trying its best. With God's help, they will be able to bring the hostages back home and finish the job, which they absolutely must. I don't envy the leaders in Israel in figuring out how to maneuver.  That must be very, very difficult as well.  Well, let's talk about the orthodox and the ultra orthodox in Israel, the Haredi. You know, how has their view changed? Because before they were not interested in serving in the army, they were not necessarily in agreement, you know, with the war. How are they feeling now? How has it changed for them and for Qabad for that matter? Okay. Good question. So first of all, just for your audience to know that Qabad, even though we are quote unquote orthodox, we're referred to as orthodox within the streams and Judaism orthodox conservative reform because we embrace the Torah and the commandments. Nevertheless, Qabad is not seen as Haredi in the Israeli society because we are are much more maybe open minded as a right word, I'm not sure, but we are more integrated with the whole of Israeli society, religious and non-religious right and left. That was one of the revolutionary approaches and philosophy of Robert Schneersen is to reach out to all Jews and not segregate ourselves from the larger Jewish community. So from the beginning of state of Israel, which was founded as a secular state, Ben-Gurion, who was the first prime minister in Israel, recognized the need to preserve, you know, the classical servant's stream of Judaism. So he made accommodations for them. And one of them was that they were exempt from serving in the army as long as they were studying in the, you know, in the academies in the Yeshivas. And that's been going on for since the statehood. However, over the years, it became a contentious political issue. A lot of the non-Haredi community felt that the Haredim were taking a pass and not doing their share in protecting a nation like everyone else. So there was a lot of tension and schism within the community. In the last many years or in the last several years, there's been a push on the part of the Israeli government and within also the Israeli society to somehow come closer together the Haredi community and the general community. And in reference to what we're talking about is for them to begin to serve in the army. So while there isn't the draft and the quotas, there's in the draft, there's still the exemption that applies to Haredim. But today, most ultra-religious Jews do join the army. Chabad forever has joined the army. The young Chabad Hasidim who was living in Israel, they joined the army. But now it's been more and more of the Haredim. And something amazing has been happening in Israel since the war started. And that is that Israel, unfortunately, maybe just the way we are wired, we mean the Jewish people, there's been a great divisions within the society. You don't need to look beyond the fact that in America, we're a population of several hundred million people, we basically have two political parties, primarily two political parties. In Israel, with eight million citizens, you have 20 political parties or more. That's make up the government, the Knesset. So there's been a lot of tension between the secular and the religious, the left and the right. And in Israel, where it's not abstract, the ideas and the policies are not abstract, but they actually affect the people in a very real way.  Everybody in Israel is involved in politics. Everyone has an opinion. And very often, it was a divisive situation. But now, everyone is coming together in unbelievable ways. We have to hope and pray that it continues. But today, there's no right and left in Israel. There's no division. Everyone is united together and feels like one big family. The first goal is to bring the hostages back. The second goal is to annihilate Hamas, who are still today. They're not backing down from their mission just to destroy the Jewish people. What's interesting is, we, the Jewish people, sadly, unfortunately, have a long history of people trying to annihilate us. Going all the way back to Egypt, when we first were born as a nation, that they enslaved the Jewish people. And we all know the story, the biblical story, where God brought the 10 plagues on the Egyptians. And eventually, they surrendered. And they said, go, let my people go. And they let the Jewish people go because they saw that they couldn't stand up against God Almighty and they were being destroyed. But these terrorists know they're being destroyed. They don't care. They don't mind that they bring destruction also on the Palestinian people who are not Hamas. But they're just sworn to destroy the Jewish people. So it's a much more difficult enemy to fight because they don't fear death.  So it's a very difficult situation. Yeah. So the Chabad and the Haredi are together on the notion that they must be destroyed. There's no difference of opinion on that. I don't believe so. And I don't think it's just Chabad and the Haredi. I think even the right and the left today all agree and acknowledge that Israel has to destroy Hamas because every time in the past when Israel was close to total victory, always politically something cropped up that brought about a ceasefire and this and that.  They didn't make a ceasefire until they destroyed them and they surrendered. Yeah. I'm troubled by all this talk about ceasefire and cause and bigger ceasefire and little ceasefire, a ceasefire part of a release of a hostages deal because I think it allows Hamas to regroup. But I think it's also a message. It's like capitulation. And we'll have more of that kind of play going forward with the other hostages. I'm troubled that even though Biden is under such political pressure that he has the pressure of Israel to do ceasefires and causes and all like, how do you feel? How do people in Israel feel about that? I can tell you how I feel on how many, many Jewish people feel probably in Israel as well. But it's really, it's part of how Jews are treated differently than anyone else. When former president Bush went after ISIS or an Iraq, no one said after two weeks that we need to have a ceasefire and we have to give them a pause so they can catch their breath and regroup. The president at the time pushed the war effort until we destroyed ISIS that we brought down Saddam Hussein. So why when it comes to Israel, all of a sudden the talk of a ceasefire and humanitarian pause, yeah, it's really, I mean, unfortunately there's a double standard when it comes to the Jewish people. And that's something that's been around for a long time, probably from the beginning of time. But when you see it in real time, it's very, very disheartening and even very, very frightening, especially the call and the pressure on Israel to stop because of the casualties of war, a war that Israel didn't initiate, didn't ask for, but a war that Israel has to fight to protect its citizens. And yes, that's why war is a terrible thing. No civilized nation wants war. But at the same time, it has a sacred obligation to protect itself and its citizens. One of the interesting things this has revealed is that the liberal press has followed this kind of ultra liberalism to support the Palestinians even at the expense of Israel. So if you look at cable news that has previously been dedicated to liberal causes in the country, in this country, now you find when they report on Israel that the first thing they do is they talk about the plight of the Palestinians and they seem to forget to cover the plight of the hostages and the people who were killed on October 7th, murdered on October 7th. And I find it very interesting that when Hamas comes up with a number, and I was just watching last night, Hamas comes up with a number and they say, oh, 11,000 Palestinians have been killed. And some of them condition it, but others do not condition it. They take it as fact. And then when the Israelis go into the tunnels under that hospital, they say we have no way of actually verifying what the Israelis are saying. And the implication is that we don't necessarily believe them. And I find that extraordinary because to me, the Israelis are trying hard to tell the truth on everything and Hamas is trying to lie on everything. And yet these news shows and channels and broadcasts seem to give the edge to anything reported by Hamas. And that's what's inflamed the Middle East. That's what's inflamed the college campuses. How do you feel about the way the media has been handling this, the Western media, if you will? Well, I agree with everything you say. And it's very, very, it's very upsetting. To me, it's just like good old antisemitism. When it doesn't even when it reports, it reports as if there's a battle between two legitimate, two legitimate peoples. And then talking about the casualties, and like you say, most of the time the focus is on the casualties happening in Gaza, not the murder of the innocent people in Israel, not about the hostages. It's really, really shocking, shocking, as if Israel just decided to go in and to bomb Gaza unprovoked. Even if they do mention it, it's like a chryslery mention, and then they just go on to talk about the casualties. And they don't even talk about the fact that Israel goes to such great lengths to try to avoid innocent or quote unquote reporting them, the civilian population, killing the civilian population. But the terrorists, they embed themselves in the residential communities and where they live, and the hospitals, and kindergartens, and all of these, as we all know. And it's as if nobody says boo, and Israel's to blame. Yeah, this is a real problem. I mean, some of my favorite radio and television stations have been doing that, one-sided reporting. And it's very troubling, and I will never forget that they did this. Now I question everything they say, not just about Israel. The other thing is funny that Fox News, which I used to say was a right-wing Trump-type organization, at least on the subject of Israel is doing a better job. It's really 180 different. And finally, YouTube. YouTube has increasingly a number of YouTube videos up there about what happens on the battlefield, about the hostages, the families, about the motivations of the Israelis. And it's better reporting. And you can go on YouTube and you can say that you're going to see that and you can be better informed on YouTube. So that's how I get my news these days because I have learned not to trust the news organizations I use to trust. And I wonder if people are getting that. And it takes me to my next question to you. We have seen this extraordinary and blatantly ignorant phenomenon in the United States where people, including college kids and university students and what have you, are protesting against Israel for Hamas. And they are kind of supporting what Hamas did. And this is happening on many, an increasing number of campuses by an increasing number of students. And the administrators and officers of these universities seem to go along with it or allow it to happen. In my view, as Ben Shapiro's view, a spokesman for the Israeli point of view American, if a teacher, I've said this before, if a teacher or administrator of one of these colleges supports Hamas or doesn't stop groups that do support Hamas, he should lose his job, it's that simple goodbye. But that's not happening. So Rev, I'd like to know your view and the view of Kabad and the Jewish community, including the Orthodox community about what is happening on these college campuses and where it is all going in terms of public opinion in this country. Yeah, again, I agree with everything you're saying. It's very, very, very frightening was happening on the campuses. Just this past Sunday, there was a rally in Waikiki, pro-Palestinian rally. And some members of the Jewish community showed up to counter it. I was there as well, and we were outnumbered, maybe five to one by the people who came out, pro Hamas. A lot of them are Americans, a lot of young people. And the tone and the anger and the shouting was very, very, very frightening. I don't think a lot of them really know what Hamas is all about. And their atrocities, or they don't want to believe it, or they just don't care. But as Jews, unfortunately, we have a long history of antisemitism. The fact that it's rearing its head in America today, to the extent that it is, is very, very frightening. And like you say, the administrators and the professors and even anyone that could support Hamas today, they're like enablers. Because by not denouncing this kind of evil, this kind of barbarism, it gives them support, gives them moral support. And moral support translates into more beheadings and more rapes and more killings. Yeah. So it's really extraordinary that anybody in the world considers themselves civilized, could support Hamas and what Hamas has done and has said it will do. From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It's outrageous. The United Nations is not doing anything. And the U.S. is helpful in its own way. But frankly, war is getting worse. As Ben Shapiro said, he doesn't sleep well at night worrying about it. And I can tell you that a lot of people don't sleep well at night worrying about, worrying about the existence of the state of Israel, worrying about a war that seems to be growing in its scope and its participants against Israel. And so I guess my question to you is how do you cope with that? How do you cope with it? And how should Jews everywhere cope with it with this emergence of a new and virulent kind of anti-Semitism, a violent anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism that doesn't go away while the Israelis are trying to save the hostages. Hamas is still shooting at them, still firing rockets into Israel. And it's not only Hamas now. It's the West Bank and it's Lebanon and it's Yemen. It's a multi-front war. It's enough to lose a little sleep over, maybe a lot of sleep. Your thoughts, your advice. Well, first of all, unfortunately, and I don't know the exact maybe that requires another show to try to understand why the left is so anti-Semitic. The people who are on the right politically for the most part are not anti-Semitic. They're supporting their support, the supportive of Israel, the support of what Israel is trying to do. It is the left that's egging on this fight and supporting the Hamas. So why is that? As a rabbi, I just want to say that throughout our history, really how Jews cope with this and how Jews cope with anti-Semitism is through intensifying our faith in God, our connection to God, and our strengthening ourselves spiritually. The spiritual dimension has a very, very strong impact on everything and all the other dimensions of life. There's something very, very interesting and that is in the very beginning of the Bible, talks about Abraham, 1st Jude. He traveled through ancient Israel, the land of Canaan, and his wife was hijacked, taken as the captive by the king. Then later on, when Abraham speaks to the king and the king returns Sarah back to him, his wife, the king says, why did you say she was your sister and therefore we took her, that she was a pretty woman? Why didn't you tell us that she was your wife? So Abraham said to the king, it's because I saw there was no fear of God in this place and I was afraid that you were going to kill me.  So Abraham was able to connect the dots between lack of faith and murder. It's not so apparent that just because there's a breakdown in our faith and a higher power, a breakdown in our faith and right and wrong and the absolute morals that the Bible teaches us, that there's a direct link with that breakdown to the actual violence that could ensue. But we're seeing it today. We're seeing it today. And unfortunately, I think that if we are able to strengthen ourselves first and ourselves within every single person individually and collectively as a society and go back to the values of the Torah of the Bible where there is right and there is wrong, it's not relative. There's absolute right and wrong and there's a higher authority, a higher power. Remember many, many years ago when in the public schools they banned prayer in public schools, the Rebbe came out, the Rebbe said that that would have a direct effect on the behavior of these students later on in their lives because if you're not reared and raised with an awareness of a higher power that's looking over you and right and wrong, then the consequences are inevitable to follow. And this was at a time when there was no shooting in schools. It was unheard of in the 1970s. We could only go back to that time. I don't mean going back to the 73 war but going back to that time. So what about action points? For example, it seems to me that Israel has 3,400,000 of its reservists on the battle and they have jobs, a lot of them. And that's got to affect the economy that they're out of work all this time. And those communities near the border, especially near the border of Lebanon, they've been abandoned. The IDF has asked people to move south to avoid the violence. And so what you have is things that will affect the Israeli economy. And so do you think American Jews have a duty to financially support Israel? And if so, how? And furthermore, let me add another thing is you know there are a lot of Americans, not only Jews, but Americans who have gone to Israel over the past few weeks and joined the IDF. Good for them. Just as a lot of Americans went to Ukraine and joined the Ukraine army, people with conscience and who are willing to put their life on the line, what about that as an action point? Those two things, could you comment? Yeah. So I think it's wonderful.  And actually that's the flip side of this horror of the war that we see so many people are coming forward and like you say, are putting their lives on the line and going above and beyond to do everything that they can to help Israel in this war. And I mean, so many examples, so many examples of big and small and big and small ways where people are at the very beginning of the war.  All the shelves were empty because people were coming in with duffel bags and buying everything that they can and sending it to Israel so they'll have. And even from our community here, some people actually flew to Israel. Some Israelis who were living here flew to join the front lines and the front lines. So I'm just here to be there. There's a fellow who comes here. He lives here and he lives part-time in Israel. He has an apartment in Natanya in Israel. And he got in touch with an organization in Israel that helps the people from the south to find places to live because they, they, you know, they, they're, they're, he puts him where burnt down and shut up, et cetera, et cetera. So he gave up, so he opened up the doors of his house, of his apartment, this family from the south. He was telling me, you know, he spoke to them. It's, it's, it's a, it's a mother and three children. Her husband was killed on October 7. So her son, one of her sons were shot and killed on October 7. And then the terrorists pulled out a grenade and was going to throw it in the apartment. So the husband jumped on the grenade and got killed, but he saved the rest of his family. But one of her sons, you know, there's shrapnel in him and he lost one of his eyes. So that's the family that's living in his apartment. And, and this is happening again and again and again and again. So that's, like I said, that's very, very amazing, the good that's coming, that's coming out of this from good, good, good people. We need to actually, we need to actually build on it and, and make it grow because this is a classical war between good and evil, darkness and light. And ultimately, what we know from what Judaism teaches us that, that, that good will vanquish evil. We believe that and light dispels darkness. And everyone in their own personal lives has to think how they can become more of a light in, in, in one's own small footprint. And collectively, this is how we're going to win this war. Yeah. And also the media and also talking on the media and, you know, covering these issues and these events. And that's why I greatly appreciate you coming on our shows to discuss it. And I, I would like to circle back with you in the near term so we can continue to follow it, what's going on and, and the changes and what it means, what it means to the, the Israelis, what it means to the Jews, what it means to the United States, what it means to the world. It has global impact and we need to, you know, we need to watch that and cover that and discuss and analyze that. So I'll be, I'll be, I'll be, I'll be back to you, Rabbi. We'll talk some more. Thank you very, very much. Thank you, Jay. Thank you for inviting me. Be well.


What's up everyone it's your girl Kenty here from Layton Sports Cards and I'm ripping a couple personal boxes here for Harper B. We've got a 2021 Panini National Treasures football hobby as well as a 2021-22 Panini National Treasures basketball hobby. All right some NT's here for Harper. We're gonna rip the uh football here first. Good luck. NT football. The last break of the night that Caleb did he pulled a booklet. Mack Jones patch auto. The patch was like a chunky adidas patch. It was sick. That was numbered I believe the 10. Up first out of 99 we've got Jason Taylor out of 99. Then we've got out of 99 Christian McCaffrey. He pulled a one-on-one Mack Jones laundry tag or no it was a yeah laundry tag um one of one out of NT football earlier too. There were some very nice ones. Air Looms. Ocho Cinco to 99. Chad Johnson. We've got tremendous treasures patched to 99. Captain Kurt Cousins. Triple NFL gear up materials. We've got Joey B. Carson Palmer and Boomer Asiason. Triple quarterback patch there. Bangles. That's cool. Rookie patch. Tremendous treasures to 99. JC Horne. JC Horne there. Rookie Auto to 25. Erin Robinson for the Giants. Erin Robinson. Sam would be jelly of this one. Look at this. We got a midnight RPA to 20. Tylen Wallace. Four colored patch auto. Nice Ravens patch there. That's sick. Eight of 20. We'll mag that one up for you Harper. Now we've got Auto to 35. Josh Gordon. Nice Gordon. And last but not least we've got Rookie Material Signatures. RPS Justin Fields. Fields to end that box. Congrats on that one. We'll mag that redemption for you. Let's go. All right let's carry that into some NT basketball here for you. Here we go. NT basketball. First up we've got a little Dean Dala here out of 75. Damian Lillard to 75. Printing plate. One of one for the Lakers that is a Talon Horton Tucker.  We've got Patch out of 99. Biography Materials. Little Anthony Davis. AD play for Charlotte. Game worn there. That's cool. And nice to 99. Tremendous treasures. LeBron James. Nice LeBron game used patch. That is sick. To 99 on that one. We've got Redemption Signatures Platinum. Card number 21. About a little Diempe Mutombo. Diempe Mutombo. Redemption there for you. Then we've got RPA to 75 Nets. A Cameron Thomas. Three of 75. Two colored patch there for the Nets. We'll mag that one. Century Patch. Jeremy Grant to 99. Jeremy Grant. We've got Biography Materials to 99 Patch. Boston. Terry Rosier the third. Oh wow.  We've got Game Gear Autographs for the T-Wolves. Eight of 25. Sam Castle. Casel. The part of the tree in the T-Wolfe logo. That is really cool. Eight of 25. Game worn. Little looks like maybe a little blue mark from where he signed. On the front there. We'll mag that. That's really cool. And last Rookie Auto to 25. Josh Christopher. Josh Christopher to 25. Alrighty Harper. That'll do it for your two boxes. Congrats as always. Thanks so much for hopping in. We'll get these right out to you.


Hi, everyone, and welcome to this Science Exchange webinar. My name is Sam Illingworth, I'm a senior lecturer in science communication at the University of Western Australia, and the purpose of these Science Exchange series are really to get an introduction to the amazing research that's done at the university in the Faculty of Science and to really think about, you know, how that research can impact and does impact on the rest of society as well. So we've got a really exciting talk today, so we're going to be hearing from Dr Cyril Gruta. And from 2005 to 2009, Cyril did his PhD at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, which involved a pioneering 20-month study on the social organisation and ecology of wild snub-nosed monkeys in China. From 2009 to 2011, Cyril worked as a postdoc researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig in Germany, and his postdoc included 18 months of research on the socio-ecology of the mountain gorilla population in Rwanda. In 2012, Cyril took up a faculty position in the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, now the School of Human Sciences at UWA, where he is now a senior lecturer. Cyril's primary research interests light at the interface of behavioural ecology and evolutionary anthropology and include the evolution of primate human sociality and a second focus of research pivots on how certain primates are able to cope with the demands of living in marginal montane environments in both the temperate zone and the tropics. And there's going to be lots of time at the end for you to put in your questions. There'll also be a recording of this webinar as well. So, in this seminar, Cyril will be talking about the social organisation of our primate relatives to explore the origins of tolerance in human sociality. So, Cyril, please take it away. All right. Thank you very much, Sam, for the introduction. So, I guess I can keep this very short since you've already highlighted my career milestones. There's no need to go into that. I just briefly wanted to say that I'm a biological anthropologist and primatologist. So, I use an evolutionary framework when trying to understand primate behaviour and human behaviour. So, first of all, we really have to recognise that humans are animals like any other and that we can just explain our behaviour using the same models used to explain the behaviour of, say, baboons. In 1838, Charles Darwin, he wrote in one of his notebooks, he who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke and by Locke meant John Locke, the philosopher. So, what this means is that only if we zoom out and compare our behaviour with that of our closest relatives in nature, will we be able to understand the evolutionary origins of what makes us human. So, primates are an important point of reference and I will use evolutionary theory today as my navigational guide, so to speak. So, my general research interests include the evolution of primate and human sociality and my particular interests revolve around the evolution of metagrwp organisation. What is metagrwp organisation? By metagrwp organisation, we mean things like tolerance between groups, cooperation between groups, and also the formation of higher-level groupings or multi-level societies, and you will hear more about those later on. So, why do we care about this? I would argue that understanding sociality at multiple levels is important because it has implications for a lot of things. It has implications for disease transmission, for example. It has implications for social transmission, how smart we are, how handsome we are. All these things are influenced by living in a metagrwp context, and you will hopefully understand this better towards the end of my talk. So, if we look at our closest relatives in nature, the non-human primates, relations between groups are often characterised by animosity and that's because of competition over resources and mates. In primates, females usually compete over food and males compete over females. Sometimes females also compete over males and males also compete over food, but that's just the classic framework. But on the other hand, there are instances of peaceful encounters, mutual tolerance, and temporary fusion between groups. And the prime example is peacefully intermingling bonobo communities. So here, sex plays a very important role in keeping peace. Females are often seen rubbing their genitals together, so this has a calming effect, which makes it easier for two groups to aggregate into a larger entity. And mutual tolerance between groups is nicely exemplified by species that live in so-called multi-level societies. So here's a definition of multi-level society. So these are essentially core social units that maintain proximity and coordinate activities with other core units, and thereby form one or more successively higher levels of grouping. And this is a topic that I've been working on for quite a while. We've had a few recent high-profile publications on this topic, and I will summarise some of that work in a minute. So where in the animal kingdom do we find such multi-level societies? They actually show quite a patchy distribution on the tree of life. They have evolved in a few primate species. For example, these haemodraeus baboons and these geladas and the snubnose monkeys that you will hear more about later on. And they are also found in a few non-primates such as elephants and whales. So here you can see the structure of a multi-level system for three different species. There's some differences among species, but what all of them have in common is that there are two social levels. There's the relatively stable one-mail unit, and then there's the higher level band. And interestingly, there's also bachelor groupings here at the periphery of the band. And these bachelor groups, they play an important role in our understanding of multi-level societies, and you'll hear more about that later. All right, let's shift gear and talk a bit about humans. In humans, intergroup relationships obviously spend a whole gamut from extreme hostilities all the way to tolerance, affiliation and alliances. And it's really that ability to overcome hostility and form cooperative and tolerant relationships with other groups that I want to emphasise today. Andropologist George Murdoch wrote in 1949, nowhere on earth do people live regularly in isolated families. So humans essentially live in a multi-level social system where smaller units are embedded within larger ones. But compared to primates, we have much more expansive interaction networks. If you look at hunter-gatter societies, you can see there's families that are embedded within bands. And these bands are embedded within higher level groupings. So in my opinion, the evolution and function of large-scale social integration in humans and primates remains an exciting, unresolved area of research in biological anthropology and primatology. So how do I go about studying this? I've used a multi-pronged approach to address this question. I've done field research on suitable model species. I've done comparative analysis looking at the evolution of social traits in different primate species. I've done cross-cultural analysis. I've looked at different human populations. So this brings me to my first major line of inquiry, which is on primate multi-level societies. I conducted a two-year study on the black and white snob-nose monkey in China. This is an intriguing and endangered species that was known to live in groups of several hundred, but very little was known about its social organisation. We didn't know how those groups were structured, so I wanted to solve that mystery. So to do so, I embarked on an adventure in a remote corner of China, the mountains of northwestern Yunnan province near the border to Myanmar and Tibet. So this is really the eastern edge of the Himalayas. Some of these mountains in the background here, they are 6,000 meters high. And as you can see from this picture, the terrain is very rugged and the slopes are pretty steep. And last year, a group of UWA undergrad students actually took part in a mobility program and they had a chance to visit this fascinating part of the world. So I followed my study subjects for roughly 20 months. I established contact with my study subjects on an average of 12 days per month. It wasn't easy to locate them in this vast landscape here. Initially, they were not habituated to humans, so I basically copied Jane Goodall in my research approach. I used a spotting scope to scan the group and record their behaviour at a distance. I had no idea how many monkeys I was studying. I had to wait for several months to get an opportunity to obtain a reliable group count. And that happened when the group crossed a gully in the forest. And the total number of individuals that I counted in the group was 407. And that's an extremely large group by primate standards. And this video here gives you an impression of how it looked like when the entire group started crossing this gap in the canopy, moving terrestrially and giving me an opportunity to count them and to gain some insights into their social organisation. So when the group crossed an open area, I recorded the time intervals between successively passing individuals and I used these time intervals to detect subunits within the larger group. So here you can see the time intervals between sequentially arriving males and you can see that the males are not randomly distributed across the group. So those peaks here, they occur at regular intervals and this is most compatible with core units that are embedded in a larger multi-level society. And you can also see that here at the periphery, the males are more clumped and these are the bachelor groups that let the progressions. And when I scanned the monkeys, I found that in only 1% of observations was another male, the nearest neighbour of a scanned male. So this means that the males kept the distance from each other and the males were typically surrounded by adult females. And this is also evidence that we're dealing here with core one-male units, one-male multi-female units that are part of a larger band. So I used these observations of spatial or physical distancing, so to speak, to gain insights into their social organisation. So now we've established that these guys live in a multi-level society, but what is the function or the adaptive benefit of living in a multi-level society? Well, before we can address that question, we need to know what allows them to form such large bands. Presumably they must face relatively little feeding competition or ecological constraints, otherwise they wouldn't be able to live in super large groups. There would be too much competition. So we had to look at their resource space. What do they eat? And on an annual basis, it was almost 70% lichens. That's an unusual food for primates. I've also tried it. If you cook it long enough and if you add some chilies, it's actually not that bad. And these lichens are fairly abundant and they're also an important winter fallback food when preferred foods such as bamboo shoots and fruits are not available. So now we can turn to the function of multi-level societies. And these bachelor groups that I mentioned early on, they are an important part of the equation here. They habitually follow the reproductive units, the 1 million units, and they wait for an opportunity to challenge and oust a leader male. So we argued that we also know that these bachelor's committee infanticide, so they kill infants that are not their own. So we speculated that the 1 million unit males, they may be better protected from attacks by bachelor groups when they are part of a larger band. So this is safety numbers. So here on the left side, the units are spread all over the place, but here on the right side, they are part of a larger collective. So they should be safer when they're part of a larger collective. So we wondered if the 1 million unit leaders collaborate to keep those nasty bachelor's at bay who are trying to get a share of the cake, so to speak. So to get to the bottom of this, I travelled to the Shenlongjia Forest in Central China in Hubei province, that's where COVID-19 started, near the Three Gorges Dam. This is where the Chinese Yeti lives apparently, but I wasn't interested in the Yeti, I was interested in a local population of golden snub-nosed monkeys, and I wanted to find out if such collective action or collective defence among social units exists in a multi-level society. There's a band of four 1 million units and one bachelor unit in the local population. What's really important is that the band was habituated, so that means those monkeys, they learned to ignore human observers, so it was easy for us to follow them and study them. And we did observe males of different units showing collective action. So these are 1 million unit leader males here. We saw them collectively chasing and expelling members of the bachelor group. We also saw them going on patrols together, and we saw them scanning the surroundings for possible intruders. And interestingly, rates of collective action were much higher during the mating season when the risk of incursions by bachelors was higher. This is another subtopic that I want to briefly address. I recently started exploring how sexual selection operates in a multi-level society. Sexual selection is one of Darwin's great insights.  And one outcome of sexual selection is extravagant ornaments, such as these luscious red lips that we see in snub-nose monkeys and also this beautiful butt here. These are all sexually selected traits. And these guys also show some striking resemblance to some celebrities out there. So we reason that male ornaments should be important in large groups where individuals are surrounded by lots of other individuals, which they don't know very well. In a situation like this, you can't individually recognize your fellow group members and you can't interact with all of them to get to know their quality and their status. So if you are a female, you can simply look at those ornaments to find out if a guy is a high quality mating partner. And if you are a male, you can assess how strong a rival is by looking, for example, at his nose or his beard for that matter. So there's no need to fight. So we predicted that ornaments should be more pronounced in large, more anonymous groups and also in species with multi-level societies. Why? Because in multi-level societies, the one male unit males, they are in close contact all the time, so there's heightened conflict potential. So the males should invest in these patches of status to advertise their quality and strength. So we did a comparative study across primates. I have to show you some graphs, but they're not too difficult to understand. So here you can see a positive correlation between group size and ornamentation. So essentially primates that live in larger groups, they are more brightly ornamented. And we also found that primates that live in these multi-level societies, they have higher levels of ornamentation. So both of our predictions were supported. It is apparently beneficial to invest in these ornaments if you live in a certain type of society. So this is how the media interpreted our findings. Science explains why hipsters grow beards. I'm not sure if that's what we showed. I think what we really tried to explain with this research is that there's a higher degree of ornamentation in larger groups and multi-level societies. And that this reflects selection for amplified signals of individual identity, rank or attractiveness in large and complex social organisations, where conflict arises frequently and individual recognition is limited. So for the remainder of my talk, I want to talk a little bit about metagroup organisation. We remember, we mentioned earlier on what that is. So these are instances where social interactions transcend group boundaries and members of different groups tolerate each other or even cooperate with each other. So let's first go to the heart of Africa, to the Virunga Volcano in Rwanda. This is where I spent two years of my lives. Me and my former PhD student Mel Merville had the privilege of following in the footsteps of Diane Fossey, who first habituated gorillas to the presence of humans and fought relentlessly for their survival. By the way, this is me up here studying the gorillas. So we were interested in the causes and consequences of intergroup conflict in mountain gorillas. The reason I picked mountain gorillas is because there's plenty of gorilla groups in Rwanda that are monitored on a daily basis and they bump into each other quite frequently. And also intergroup encounters show the whole spectrum from peaceful intermingling between two groups, as you can see here, to lethal attacks. And I will never forget that morning when a lone silverback, a solitary male, showed up in our study group and his arrival triggered a massive attack. He was all the resident males in the study group. They started attacking him. They started hitting him and biting him. And the intruder was totally outnumbered by the 45 gorillas in my study group. And he had flesh wounds all over his body and he died a few days later from an infection. So how do we explain this massive variation in what happens when two groups meet? And as it turns out, familiarity is the key to this problem. Familiarity promotes peace. Familiarity had a significant influence on whether an encounter between groups would remain peaceful or escalate. If you look at this graph here, you can see that when two groups met that had never belonged together, agonistic or aggressive encounters were much more common. But when two groups met that used to be a single group prior to a group split, peaceful encounters were more common. So when groups were familiar with each other, they were less likely to attack each other. And as I mentioned early on, an important goal of my research is to understand why humans form lasting affiliative ties with other groups or how people can get this courage from being mean and aggressive to their neighbors. And again, we're using an evolutionary lens to address this question. So what factors could be responsible for groups to associate and cooperate? Well, if you read the anthropologic literature, the usual suspects are cooperative hunting and cooperative breeding. So this is basically alloparenting, helping each other raise kids. So these are cooperative activities that usually include and unite members of lower-level social units, such as families. But for large-scale social integration, we probably have to look elsewhere. So to understand the emergence of social integration or intergroup tolerance, we can look at peace systems. These are groups of neighboring societies that do not make war on each other. Douglas Frye, in his book Beyond War, he made a very strong case for the existence of peace systems in human societies. And he hypothesized that there are a number of factors that are important in promoting peace, especially interdependence, which can take the form of trade and cooperative defence, and interconnections among subgroups, which is usually shown by intermarriage. So let's start with intermarriage. Another important influential anthropologist, Bernard Chape, in his book Primeval Kinship, he argued that intermarriage is crucial for creating links between groups. And he basically argued that lifetime bonds between transferred kin and their natal kin creates links between groups based on consanguineal kinship, which is blood-related kinship, and affinol kinship, which is in-law kinship. So an example of consanguineal kinship would be when a woman transfers to another group and has children there, then her children can develop a relationship with their maternal grandparents living in the woman's natal group. And an example of affinol kinship would be when a transferred woman maintains contact with her natal kin, then her husband can recognize his wife's kin or his in-laws. The second pillar that may support peace systems is active trade of subsistence goods, for example food. For example, when different groups specialize in the production of particular trade goods, which are then exchanged with neighbors, that would be an example of interdependence. And the last determinant of peace systems is defense against hostile third parties. Dick Alexander, another well-known anthropologist, wrote an essay back in the 70s, where he argued that between group competition is a strong selective force for the evolution of superfamilial groupings and complex coalitions. So he essentially said that the need for cooperative defense against external threats can actually foster friendly attitudes to neighboring communities. And a good historical example of this is the Iroqual Confederacy of Native American Tribes. So this is an inter-society alliance for the purpose of mutual defense. So these groups, they stopped all their internal squabbling and unified the groups towards a common goal. Or for example, when strangers are exposed to a common threat such as a terrorist attack, they're more likely to identify themselves as belonging to a uniform social entity. So how did I go about testing the effects of these variables on intergroup peace? I used what we call the standard cross-cultural sample, which is a representative sample of 186 traditional human societies of all geographic regions and cultural clusters. And I predict that that conflict between communities should be lower with increasing degrees of trade, intermarriage, and external warfare. And as it turns out, trade was the only variable that significantly influenced where the groups would remain peaceful or have conflicts. You can see that here when there was no trade in a traditional society, then conflicts between communities, they were endemic. But when trade relationships were well established, then conflict between communities tended to be less common. So the last thing I want to mention is that we also did some field experiments to address the question of whether people are willing to help someone from another group. For example, we did a lost letter experiment here in Perth. We dropped 600 letters in various towns in rural Western Australia. And then we tell it how many letters were picked up by Pastor Spy and put in the mail. The number of letters that were returned was a measure of cooperativeness or altruism. And we varied the location of the receiver of the letter. Letters were addressed to either an in-town resident or someone living in the Perth metropolitan area. Overall, we found that nearly 50% of letters were returned. That's not bad at all. But people were equally likely to help an in-group member and an out-group member. So there was no difference here. The only variable that explained return rates was socioeconomic status of the town where the letter was dropped. So people in towns of higher socioeconomic status, they were more likely to return a letter. And recently, my honor student did a study where he explored if people are more likely to help strangers when they are supporting the same AFL team. So that is when they were the same team apparel. So after football games, we asked fans for a favor such as borrowing their phone. And there was no evidence of in-group favoritism. So people showed no difference in attitudes towards in-group versus out-group members. I guess if we had done this experiment in the UK, let's say with Liverpool and Manchester United, we would probably have gotten a different result. But football is probably a bit less competitive here than soccer in the UK. And the last thing I want to mention is we've also recently started exploring the proximate or mechanistic underpinnings of between-group tolerance.  Mateship is an Australian code of conduct that emphasizes loyalty and friendship. It's a bit like kinship terms such as brother, which function to form strong bonds among in-group members. But we don't know if they play a role in establishing ties without group members. So to explore that possibility, we conducted an experiment. We recorded two sets of speeches by three male speakers. The first set contained the word mate so that we infused that speech with the word mate. The second set didn't contain the word mate. And the three speakers, they had different accents. We had one Australian English accent. We had the British English accent.  So the listeners were then asked to rank the speakers in terms of trustworthiness. And we found that the listeners regarded speakers with their own accent with an Australian accent as having higher trustworthiness than speakers with a British or a Swedish accent. But using the word mate didn't make a difference. It didn't make the speakers more trustworthy. So there was no evidence that the word mate is used as a kinship term to create bonds both within groups and across groups. So now we've seen that an evolutionary lens can help us understand what it means to live in a complex society and why we sometimes get along with our neighbors. So we are fortunate to have been equipped with the capacity to form tolerant, peaceful and cooperative relationships with people outside our immediate social sphere. So let's use that capacity to make the world a better place. That's great. Thank you so much, Sue, for that wonderful talk and a lovely note to end on as well. One of the questions that we've had that's come through from Elvin is how does group living in multi-level societies affect adult females' behaviours? That's a very good question. So if you live in a large multi-level society, you're obviously confronted with a lot of challenges. For example, there's a lot more individuals around you. So it may be quite cognitively demanding to recognise all the different individuals around you. So that's why we believe those females rely on these ornaments. So they use those ornaments to gauge whether a male is, for example, a good mating partner or not. So this is one difference between living in a multi-level society and living in a single-level society, so to speak. But there's, of course, other challenges, for example. It may also have an influence on their cognitive capacity, on their brain size, because there's a different set of challenges that they're exposed to when they live in a multi-level society compared to when they live in a single-level society. I'm not sure if that's what the question is trying to get at. No, I think absolutely. There's lots of comments and questions just saying great job as well, Cyril, and they really enjoyed it. And Elvin said, yeah, that absolutely answers the question. So Debra's got a question here that says, on the accent and mate experiment, did you look for an interaction between accent and use of the term? So, for example, with an outsider accent, does mate change any perception? Good question. We did actually look for an interaction between those two variables. There was none. So that's why we left that interaction out of the equation and just looked at the effects of accent and using the term mate separately, in the same model, but without looking at the interaction effect. Absolutely. So, please continue to put your questions in the Q&A section. I just had a question, actually, Cyril. The study that you talked about with Australian football, I found to be really interesting, and you hinted at the fact that maybe in a sport that was slightly more and I guess partisan in terms of the attitudes towards different football, towards different groups, do you think that sport and in particular soccer represents a tribal attitude of human beings that we can see analogies of in our primate relatives? Absolutely. I mean, team sports is something that we don't see in non-human primates, but there's a lot of parallels between sports competitions and intergroup conflict in humans and primates, because as you mentioned, there is a high level of conflict during sports competitions. So I think these are related phenomena, so we can use the same sorts of explanations to understand these two phenomena. There's also important cross-cultural differences. Of course, as I mentioned, AFL here is probably less competitive than soccer in the UK, so if we want to get a holistic understanding of sports competitions in human societies, we obviously have to look at different cultures and not just focus on one single culture. No, absolutely. Emma's just said, would you be able to link the research on mateship and trustworthiness? So, when we distribute this video, Emma, that's something we can definitely do, while the stuff that's been published anyway. I'm sure still doesn't want to be sharing his yet to be analysed data. So, I just have another question as well. You know when you're, you know, the example you gave of the primates, you know, who started the really quite, who ended up being killed by the other primates, is there ever a danger of your presence as researchers being detected and leading to changes in behaviour that wouldn't normally be there outside of your presence? Yes. When we worked on the gorillas, we worked on a completely habituated group, so that means that group had learned to tolerate the presence of humans, so they completely ignored us.  We had to make those, you know, gorillas sounds like. So, this helped, you know, to calm everyone down. So, we were essentially announcing that we come in peace. And then the gorillas, they wouldn't even bother looking at us for most of the time. I mean, there were a few youngsters that sometimes tried to play with me, but I had to tell them no way. I'm not allowed to do that. There's risks of disease transmission, et cetera. So, we have to keep a distance. I'm not sure if you got the message, but those gorillas were fully habituated, so their behaviour wasn't affected by our presence. With the snub noses that I showed earlier on, the situation was a bit different because they had never been the subject of any studies. So, we decided to observe them from a distance using a telescope. So, most of the time, they were not even aware that we were observing them. So, we used two different approaches for two different species, depending on the level of habituation. That's great. And a question here from John. Is infanticide or infanticide, sorry to pronounce that, is that only observed in certain primate species and is there a reason for why that's the case? Yep. Good question. Infanticide is actually quite common in non-human primate societies. It's more common in single male groups. So, when a leader male gets replaced by an incoming male, the incoming male, if he's not related to those infants, he's likely to kill them. And the evolutionary reason he does that is because it makes the females start reproducing again. It makes the females start cycling again and then the new leader male can obviously start reproducing with those females and leave offspring. So, that's the evolutionary or reproductive explanation for infanticide in primate societies. That's great. Thank you. And then another question here from Alvin. When you made research about the baboons in Tanzania, I guess what you saw is like what is the main role of female adults in groups except taking care of children and how female adults affect male adults. Is that fair? I'm not sure if I'm following because I didn't do research on baboons in Tanzania. I'm not sure which species this question is related to. So, maybe we can see what would you see the main role of the female adults would be in the different primates that you were talking about. There's a framework that is often used in my field. It's the socioecological framework. And according to that framework, females are more limited by access to food resources because they need food in order to reproduce, whereas males are more limited by access to females. So, that's why males compete over females and females compete over food. Maybe that's the question he was getting at. So, we see a difference in priorities essentially between males and females. So, most female competition is over food, whereas male competition typically tends to be over access to females. And with the gorillas that you're talking about in particular, is there a higher proportion of adult males to adult females? And if so, how is that proportion developed, I guess? Well, with the gorillas in the Virunga Volcanoes, it's interesting that a lot of gorilla groups actually contain additional males. Typically, gorillas are portrayed as living in one male group with one silverback and a harem of females. But that's not the case everywhere in Africa. As I said in Rwanda, there's plenty of multi-male groups. And in a multi-male group, there's usually one dominant silverback and then there's a second in command. And often, there's also peripheral silverbacks that are forced to stay at the edge of the group. They're not allowed to approach the females too closely. Sooner or later, a group like this will probably disintegrate and lower ranking males will try to lure some of those females to join their groups and establish new groups. So, there's some interesting social dynamics going on in that gorilla population. And then one final question here then from Jeremy, who just wants to know, of all the primates that you've studied, which of you found to be the most interesting to observe and why? Oh, that's a good question. Most people would probably expect me to say gorillas because they're so charismatic. But that's not the case. Gorillas are actually often quite boring to watch. They spend a lot of time just eating salad and digesting and making weird sounds while digesting. Whereas the snub noses, there's a lot more going on socially. And that's probably because of the complexity of their society. So, there's a lot of bonding going on within the groups. And as I've shown, there's even cooperative behaviour going on involving members of separate groups. So, we see highly complex social dynamics at multiple levels. Whereas in the gorillas, most of their day-to-day routine is characterized by finding food. Once in a while, when two gorilla groups meet, then we do see some action. But it doesn't happen very often. And social interactions in gorilla groups, they can be very subtle, especially among females. Females usually try to avoid each other. They rarely even groom each other. I've rarely seen a gorilla female groom another gorilla female. Whereas in the snub noses, they spend hours just grooming each other and cementing those social bonds that are really, really important in their complex societies. Well, thank you so much for your talk today, Stuart. I certainly learnt a lot. I don't think I'd ever find it boring looking at gorillas. But then, if I had several thousand hours of doing it, maybe I might change my mind. Thank you very much for joining us today. Stay safe and goodbye. Thank you so much, Sam, for moderating the webinar. Thank you.


Hello, folks. My name is Diptharup. I'm a product designer at Flipkart, and I'll be talking about how we're using generative AI, image-based generative AI models to basically enable large-scale visualization of products, right? So here's the problem. Worldwide and not just India, what is happening is users are hesitant to buy large electronics or say furniture is online. And the reason, primarily, is because they're not able to visualize a product in their space, right? So how can we solve that problem? That is the core solution that we were looking at. So augmented reality, to some extent, was able to solve this problem, but the solution is not scalable. The problem with augmented reality is like a lot of devices, Android devices, do not support AR, right? That is the first problem. Secondly is handheld devices. Mobile devices are not as stable as a head-mounted device. So aligning objects is pretty difficult for users, right? And most importantly, for augmented reality to work, you need to have all the products. You need to have 3D models of all the products, right, to put it in the scene. So making those 3D models in itself is a very costly affair. So the solution that AR was providing was not scalable. So these images that you see here are from Flipkart's user research team, where they went on and they were trying to find out what is the reason why users are hesitant to buy these products online. So the goal of the experience of what we were trying to do with Generative AI is we wanted to provide a seamless or frictionless way for users to visualize a given product in their space, right? And we wanted it to be scalable again. And in terms of our target audiences, since Flipkart is an e-commerce company, what we wanted to do was primarily target pin code changes, like people who have multiple pin codes. We're trying to target these audiences and also users who are browsing a lot of home categories, right? Furnitures, televisions, whatever. Yes. So in terms of methodology, what we were trying to do is we were trying to use image-based generative AI models a technique called in-painting capability. So what is in-painting capability? In-painting capability refers to the AI model's ability to fill in missing piece of information in an image, right? So this picture here that you see is a prompt that I've put in Dali, which is, say, a red bicycle on a hill, oil paint, big brush paint, and style of cloud monet. So it generates this particular image. Now what I do is I erase a certain section of this particular image, and I put in another prompt saying a red house in similar style. So what Dali does is it puts in a house which is similar to the surrounding, right? This is in-painting capability. And the solution that we were looking at was based on the same principle of in-painting. Yes. So I'll briefly touch upon the experience here. What we did was every product here had a trigger, right? So the trigger for, say, this particular television was this try the AI room design of widget, clicking on which you would come onto a home page, or, say, an onboarding page, which would have a multimedia widget, say, a video playing and explaining the user what the feature is about. Then we have a flow to capture image, and then we have centralized tabs. So the centralized tabs would contain templates for the users to play with. And also, say, whatever progress you're making with the images that they've uploaded, those would get saved here, right? In terms of, again, capturing the room, we wanted the user to click a picture of their room. And when they would do that, it was extremely important to call out the privacy disclaimer. Because as soon as you are using information that the users are giving the platform, it's important to call out that we'll be storing these images for future references or whether we'll be using to enhance their experience. So you should have these ethical considerations in place, especially if you're using AI. And then when the users would click on, say, the camera, when they're using the camera, giving them a one is to one camera viewport and not, say, the entire screen. The primary reason why we were doing this is because for this particular pilot, we were using stable diffusion, which is, again, a generative model, image with generative model. And the default size for, say, stable diffusion is 512 into 512 pixel, which is one is to one aspect ratio. So we wanted to make the input similar to the output so that the output has very little distortion. Because as soon as your image is your aspect ratio is different to the output, it will create distortion. So to avoid that, we were using one is to one camera viewport. And then we would also have the help text here guiding the user about what to do, how to click the best possible picture. Then comes the room selection. So again, what we were doing is as soon as the user clicks an image, the next step is we were asking them to associate that picture with the room. So what that does is, as soon as you map an image to a room in the back end, the room could load up possible verticals that that image is associated to, right? So if you're clicking a picture of, say, you've just clicked a picture and you've said that it's a picture of a living room. So in the back end, we would be knowing that possible furnitures or, say, electronics that can come up in a living room would be, say, a TV unit, a television, or a sofa. So the load time or the computing time would immensely reduce in that case. So that's, again, a tech consideration here. And then we would mask. So remember in the methodology slide, we were showing we're using the in-painting capability, wherein in an image, we were removing a certain section. So similar use case here, what we were doing is instead of erasing the section, we are giving the user physical mask. This blue object here is a physical mask here. What we are asking them to do is mask the area that you would want to erase out, right? So the user masks that area. And what that does is, as opposed to erasing a section, having a physical mask enables you to have a control of the aspect ratio. Again, if you say, for instance, you click a picture of a TV unit which doesn't have a television on it and you want to visualize how a television would look like when it's there, right? So if you give user the freedom to erase, what they'll do is they'll end up erasing the entire wall behind it, right? And that would create a problem. A 42-inch television would become a large-scale theater-sized screen. So we didn't want to do that. So we wanted to restrict that. Hence, we gave physical masking. And the other thing that we were doing is we were trying to allow our models to be optimized by resolution. So rather than rendering the complete area on an image, we were just allowing them to render a single portion. What that does is it helps immensely reduce the compute time. Because each time you make an API call, it takes five to six seconds to load that particular section. So again, we were trying to optimize by resolution and then scaling the selection. So we gave the user a slider to scale in the particular mask. And now, what is happening is, if you see, just wait, when the user clicks the image and they click on place TV with AI magic, the in-painting capability kicks in, and it replaces that section with the television. See, that is on Flipkart. So users are now able to visualize the particular section. Yes. So once the user goes through the masking flow, they come onto this piece of, we can call it a dashboard. It's not essentially a dashboard, but a section. And this particular page, what it does is through on this page, via this page, you get to visualize other products, more products. If you want, you can edit the particular product out again. So this is the anatomy for that. Again, we have the one-to-one image area, which I mentioned earlier. And there's a status bar. There are actions. And there is an input and feedback panel here, right? Yeah. So essentially, that translates into the features that we want the user to have here. Now we have provision for choices. So how many of you here have used tools like Mid Journey or Stable Diffusion, a lot of you, right? So as soon as you hit a prompt, you would see four variants of the same image appearing. Same, your output has four variants of it, right? Similarly, these image-generating models, what it does is it can generate multiple outputs, right? And to keep that in consideration, we gave the users a slider for horizontally scrolling the possible variants that can come out of a particular mask. So ideally, it shouldn't happen. Only a single image should come out. But as you know, the technology is pretty new. And it can so happen that the picture you've clicked has some sort of distortion. It could be in the form of lighting. It could be because of the perspective or the angle. So these image-generating models which are being trained, they might not be able to perceive it correctly at the first go. So that training needs to happen constantly. So anyway, we had a provision for choices. Choices are nothing but the variants, right? And then we also gave the users to give feedback on these particular choices. So initially, when these models are being trained on data sets, we don't know as to which selection the user would like more, right? So we gave users an option to upward or downward the particular choice that they would like. So the users would downward or downward it. And what this does is it helps us train the models better. Then we gave the user to visualize before and after. So before would look like this. And after would look something like this. And it was a very immersive action that we gave as soon as the user hits on before and after visualization tab. We sort of give prominence to that and dim the other sections, right? And we also have a edit mask flow there. So if the users feel they've not edited out that particular area well, they can always edit it again. Then we have the view details and visualize more products. I think since there's lightning talk, I might not be able to complete it in time. So I don't want to get into details of this. Again, so models in the sense, while you're saving a room, it's very important to again give a disclaimer that how you would be using the data. It is a very important ethical consideration, Simon, again, that you tell the user what you will be doing with that particular data. And then when the room is saved, in that initial onboarding page that I spoke about, what happens is the room gets saved in the save room section of that onboarding page. And the users can come again later and modify it if they wish to. That brings me into the user experience part of it. Now I'll talk about the generative AI landscape in general. So primarily, there are these three areas that are there. One is text and code. The other is image and video. And then we have audio. So text and code, I think, you might be knowing about chat GPT. And then there are these code building tools that are there. And also, there's next-gen assistant for superior customer understanding that is happening. So Microsoft Google Open AI code here, Hug & Face, these are the leading companies in text and code space. Then we have the image and video. So our entire experience that I was talking about falls under image and video section. And there are companies like Stable Diffusion, Mid Journey, Runaway, these companies, and Dali as well. So these are the companies that are leading the image and video space. And then there's audio space. Audio space is extremely important and popular at this point of time. So if you would have an the arrow that you see here at the bottom talks about the adoption and maturity at this point. So text and code has the highest adoption and maturity at this point. Image and video has medium and audio has low. If you would have asked me if I had to present this a month back, I would rate audio as low adoption on maturity. But currently, at this given point in time, audio has also gained a medium maturity and adoption. You might be seeing memes where in Cristiano Ronaldo is singing Bollywood songs or say some the voice of a deceased singer is being used to play a new song and a new age song. So audio in itself has gained a lot of popularity. I would have played something here, but I don't think we have internet connection over here. Not able to play it. But yeah, that's about it. Thank you. You can reach out to me over LinkedIn. This is my email ID. You can scan the code. You can directly hit me up on LinkedIn. So yeah, thank you so much. I don't think we have time for questions, but I'll be here. If you have anything to ask, just hit up. Thank you.


Dear students, now we are going to talk about the internet addiction. We come to know that due to the excessive use of internet in our day-to-day life, we are becoming internet addict and we here or we come to know that certain people are considered as internet addict. So what is internet addiction? Internet addiction is a problematic, compulsive use of the internet that results in significant impairment in an individual's functions in various life, domains over a prolonged period of time. So when we define internet addiction, then such compulsive use of internet, due to which your routine life gets disturbed and your different day-to-day life responsibilities and functions are not actively performed and if your problem goes on for a long time, then it is considered as internet addiction. Though when we talk about internet addiction, internet addiction is not considered as a psychological disorder by the American Psychological Association, but some scholars say that internet addiction is a leading health problem for the young generation who is heavily dependent on the internet. So if we talk about the symptoms of the internet addiction, we can categorize symptoms of internet addiction in three categories, physical symptoms, psychological symptoms or social symptoms. So let's first see the physical symptoms. So those who are internet addict may have back ache and headache. and the problems of dry eyes and vision can be solved their weight is increased or decreased and their dietary patterns can also be changed or they do compulsive waiting and they start avoiding eating and if we talk about social symptoms of internet addiction then your biggest symptom is inability to prioritize or keep schedules you can't prioritize your work and you can't follow your schedule you have to do things from time to time you are useless in that you become a victim of social isolation it's not good to talk to others it's not good to meet others you don't have any sense of the time you don't know when you are using mobile or internet and how long you have been using it defensiveness comes in your behavior you feel defensive whenever someone is talking to you and you avoid doing work you don't do your work well and you try not to do your work and you become bored with the routine tasks which are your day-to-day activities you start avoiding them and you start feeling bad when we talk about psychological symptoms of internet addiction you can be depressed you can have a feeling of guilt anxiety you can have a drastic swing in your mood and you may have the feeling of fear as well when we talk about diagnostics of internet addiction there is a popular criteria which was developed in 2005 to identify internet addiction disorder in general population and the first criteria is that is pre-occupied with the internet constantly thinks about past use or future use do you always complain about the internet or the purpose of using it needs to use the internet with the increased amount of time to gain satisfaction whenever you feel that you are doing something then you feel that you are using the internet or the internet timing is increasing day by day has made unsuccessful efforts to control cut back or stop use of the internet you want to use the internet less but you are not able to control your timing and you are restless, moody, depressed or irritable when attempting to control internet use and you have stayed online larger than originally intended so you go to any social media platform to see for 2-4 minutes and later you know that you have wasted 2-3 hours on it so these are all parameters based on which we can assess internet addiction at first level when we talk about internet addiction there are some other types of it like social media addiction, gaming addiction selfie addiction or pornographic addiction these types are considered as internet addiction and they are also considered as addiction