Author: TJ Ravishankar

There is an intensifying obsession in businesses with automation, aided and abetted by AI, which is so overpowering that it has displaced from the public sphere all else, displaying a poverty of thinking through. Since it is clearly not a phase, the sooner businesses realise the folly of such narrow thinking, the better it will be. Will they?

We don’t have to dramatically alter our educational system for AI as is being argued by many because there is no dearth of educational materials on subjects such as Linear Algebra, Calculus, Probability and Statistics, which, however, can be and are studied even without any reference to AI. And the same goes for language too. We need to reorient the study of these subjects from the perspective of AI and build also a new generation of teachers. It is vital that we apply our minds to this if we do not wish this endeavour to go the way of so many Edtech companies

What a relief! Humanity is safe from AI! AI is not going to take over humanity. For a simple reason.
There is a business to be built, actually businesses, competition to be ridiculed and quashed, new products to be launched, new names to be thought of (no more LLMs – Meta), pricing to be perfected, investments to be carefully planned. With so many practical things to be accomplished, where is the time to take over humanity?

It is now beyond doubt that there are multiple players in the field of ‘artificial intelligence’ focused on leveraging the hype that they have themselves created to cash in on attracting investment. The lifeline of the world of IT and computing (of which something called AI is a part) is data centres (using the plural as singular), and the lifeline of data centres in power supply, which explains the continuous search for power efficient locations. And, of course, for fresh investment.

Relationships matter, in life and among data. And, just as in life, we need to steer clear off spurious relationships and stay invested with the genuine. Both take a lot of effort and thinking. It gets more challenging with data because of the multiple ways in which it is captured and the multiple formats and databases in which it is stored.