Author: Satyen K Bordoloi

Due to the use of Artificial Intelligence in the taxation system in India, it is becoming harder to commit tax fraud writes Satyen K. Bordoloi Last year when the GSTN authorities in UP put the activities of traders through BIFA – an AI software to detect transactional anomalies – the name of a textile company in Hapur district came up. Despite a turnover of Rs. 25 crores, it had not deposited tax even once. The firm was using input credit from bills that had a value under Rs. 50,000 to avoid detection. The fraud had escaped human eyes, but not…

In spite of so much data being created every day, we run the risk of causing an information blackhole in the future, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. Today the world creates more data in days than it did in a year till 2000. Yet, scientists fear that in a few hundred years, there will be an information blackhole about this time with researchers having less data to study us than in the times before the digital age. Sounds counterintuitive right? Billions of selfies are taken by millions of people daily, many uploaded to social media. So are all kinds of other…

Most people know nothing about the Dutch company ASML. This does little to dent the fact that it is the most important company in the world writes Satyen K. Bordoloi Do you know what is common to every electronic device in your home: from computers, TV and fridge to fans, mixers and lightbulbs? All of them have ICs or Integrated Chips, also simply called chips or microchips. Multiple miniaturized transistors and electronic components are integrated into one chip like the 5-nanometer Bionic chip in iPhone 13 and 14 have 15 billion transistors. Some of the world’s most profitable companies are…

Artificial intelligence systems hallucinate just as humans do and when ‘they’ do, the rest of us might be in for a hard bargain, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. When I prompted it, ChatGPT took less than a second to write a sonnet about hate in Shakespeare’s voice that began: “Hate, the poison that doth gnaw the soul; And turn the heart to stone, a bitter thing; That spreads its venom, maketh us to cower; And robbeth us of love and joy’s sweet fling.” It has even passed law and medical exams. But when I asked ChatGPT “what is the world record…

We rarely think of what ‘information’ is, but it is the single most important factor shaping our lives, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi… In the 1997 film Nothing To Lose, Tim Robbins sees his wife intimate with his boss. At the edge of a breakdown when a carjacker gets into his car, he does not respond to his threats. After a mad journey that risks his life, the film ends with him realizing his wife was not having an affair after all. Though a comedy, the film highlights something crucial: the power information – in this case misinformation – has to…

Though ChatGPT can churn out great text in seconds, when it comes to self description, this cutting-edge technology seems to struggle finds out Satyen K. Bordoloi Ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT on November 30 last year, the world has been unable to shut up about it. I used it and realised the hype is correct. And so are the fears. ChatGPT will upend the frontiers of human creativity as it exists today. However, I do not buy into the fact that all will end. Instead, with the help of AI systems like ChatGPT, human creativity will reach newer heights never…

Chinese researchers claim to have figured out an algorithm that can use existing quantum computers to decrypt classical encryption heralding the age of quantum hacking writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. Is anything digital safe anymore? Your debit card pin has four numbers. There are ten thousand combinations any four numbers can make. Any system that wanted to crack your pin would take a decent amount of time to figure it out. But using quantum methods, this can be done exponentially faster. That is because in 2019 Google researchers calculated that its quantum computer was 158 million times faster than a supercomputer.…

Artificial Intelligence may have come a long way but many Indian businesses still resist it writes Satyen K. Bordoloi explaining why they should go the other way 25 years ago – On Jan 1, 1998, companies in India were just beginning to use computers. The Internet had been available for just under two and a half years. Yet, forget the internet, most companies resisted computers. What’s the use, they asked, business has been happening without PCs just fine. They held out till they were forced to realise the obvious: using computers and the internet was not a choice, but a…

The scientific developments brought forth by human endeavour in 2022 will make us a truly spacefaring civilization states Satyen K. Bordoloi Statistical probability says that with millions of stars and hundreds of millions of planets, life must surely exist elsewhere in the universe. The thing about statistics is they can lie in plain sight. Even if there is life elsewhere, what if it is still rudimentary? More terrifyingly, as some scientists have argued, considering the relatively young age of the universe, what if we are the first of the intelligent lifeforms in it? If we are alone, or the first…

You can now buy a quantum computer, Satyen K. Bordoloi explains its significance The year 2022 has witnessed many momentous moments: multiple moon missions, fusion power, JWST’s new but ancient galaxies, ChatGPT, quantum leaps in quantum computing etc. Yet, what 2022 might one day end up being largely remembered for, is as the year when the first affordable retail quantum computer went on sale. Shenzhen SpinQ Technology Co., Ltd. has come out with three models – Gemini, Gemini Mini and Triangulum that are ‘portable’ quantum computer models anyone can buy. While the first two are “2 qubits desktop NMR quantum…