IT and Emerging Technologies — Quick Revision

A last-week revision sheet for emerging technologies. Prelims asks for the one-line meaning of a term; Mains asks what it means for India.

Terms in One Line

Term	Meaning
Machine learning	Programs that learn patterns from data instead of following hand-written rules
Deep learning	ML using many-layered artificial neural networks
Generative AI	Models that create new text, images, audio or code
Large language model	Generative model trained on vast text to predict the next token
Hallucination	Fluent but false output from a generative model
Deepfake	AI-generated synthetic media impersonating a real person
Qubit	Quantum bit; can be in a superposition of 0 and 1
Entanglement	Linked qubits whose states are correlated whatever the distance
Decoherence	Loss of quantum behaviour due to disturbance from the environment
QKD	Quantum Key Distribution; eavesdropping is detectable
Post-quantum cryptography	Classical algorithms designed to resist quantum attack
Blockchain	Distributed, tamper-evident ledger validated by consensus
Edge computing	Processing data near its source to reduce delay
Network slicing	Several virtual networks on one physical 5G network
ATMP / OSAT	Assembly, testing, marking and packaging of chips

Initiative	Year	Key fact
National Supercomputing Mission	2015	PARAM series; C-DAC and IISc
Semicon India Programme / ISM	December 2021	₹76,000 crore
5G services launched	October 2022	—
National Quantum Mission	April 2023	₹6,003.65 crore; 2023-24 to 2030-31; 50–1,000 physical qubits target
Digital Personal Data Protection Act	2023	Governs processing of digital personal data
IndiaAI Mission	March 2024	₹10,371.92 crore; compute, datasets, foundation models

High-yield facts

Micron’s ATMP unit at Sanand (approved June 2023); Tata Electronics fab at Dholera (approved February 2024).
India hosted the GPAI summit in New Delhi in December 2023 and co-chaired the Paris AI Action Summit in February 2025.
Nobel Physics 2024 — Hopfield and Hinton (neural networks); Nobel Chemistry 2024 — Baker, Hassabis, Jumper (protein design and AlphaFold).
Shor’s algorithm is the reason quantum computing threatens today’s public-key encryption.

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