Tata Group’s JLR opens three autonomous-tech hubs in Europe; Infosys names Shaji Mathew HR boss

Tata Group’s Jaguar Land Rover said on Tuesday it is opening three new engineering hubs in Europe to develop autonomous vehicle technologies as part of its partnership with Silicon Valley artificial intelligence company Nvidia, Reuters reports. Also in this brief, several countries, last week, agreed on a call to action over the use of AI in warfare; and Freshworks, yesterday, named Sandie Overtveld as the Senior Vice President and general manager for its Asia-Pacific, Japan, and Middle East and Africa markets. Notes: A global Summit on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain was held last week in the city of Hague, where several countries signed an agreement to put the responsible use of AI higher on the political agenda, Techspot reports. With their joint call to action, the participating countries and other stakeholders underlined the need to put the responsible use of AI higher on the political agenda and to further promote initiatives that contribute to this respect, the government of the Netherlands said in a statement on Feb. 16. Luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover said on Tuesday it is opening three new engineering hubs in Europe to develop autonomous vehicle technologies as part of its partnership with Silicon Valley artificial intelligence company Nvidia, Reuters reported earlier today. The hubs in Munich, Bologna and Madrid will develop self-driving systems for JLR's next generation of luxury vehicles. JLR already has six global tech hubs the United States, China and Europe. JLR, a unit of India's Tata Motors, said the locations were chosen because of the local availability of digital engineering specialists and will create almost 100 engineering jobs focused on developing driver assistance systems and artificial intelligence for self-driving cars of the future, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, Uber Technologies said on Monday it will introduce electric vehicles in India for ridesharing, with plans to introduce 25,000 EVs over three years. Uber's fleet partners will buy the EVs from Tata Motors, India's biggest electric carmaker, Prabhjeet Singh, president, Uber India and South Asia, told Reuters in a phone interview yesterday. In some IT services news, Infosys, India’s second biggest IT services company, named Shaji Mathew as Group Head of Human Resources, to take over from Krish Shankar who retires on March 21, 2023, the Bengaluru company said in a press release on Feb. 17. Mathew will take on the new role from March 22. Currently, he is Infosys’ global head of delivery for Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare and Life Sciences. He is also the chair of the company’s committee for diversity, equity, and inclusion in India. Moving on to software products, Freshworks, a Chennai and Silicon Valley software company, yesterday, named Sandie Overtveld as the Senior Vice President and general manager for its Asia-Pacific, Japan, and Middle East and Africa markets. Sandie will be based in Singapore, where he’s previously overseen large sales operations at Freshworks’s larger rivals Zendesk, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard. Before joining Freshworks, he was heading the Apac and Japan operations at WalkMe Inc., which sells digital adoption platforms, according to a press release.