Author: Satyen K Bordoloi

Genetic sequencing and editing, from the realm of science fiction less than a quarter-century ago has turned real with a vengeance, leaving the human race unprepared for its consequences finds out Satyen K. Bordoloi In the highly underrated 1997 film Gattaca, the protagonist named Vincent Freeman is – ironically – not free. But it is not the social externalities such as the colour of his skin, his station of birth, or his position in class hierarchy that cause him to suffer discrimination, but rather it is his genetic code. In this not-so-distant future, designer babies whose genes are altered before…

AI has come alive: has been the refrain of the world after a Google researcher claimed so. But has it really, wonders Satyen K. Bordoloi as he delves into the reasons for our sentient AI fetish “It’s alive! It’s alive!” These portentous words from the 1931 movie Frankenstein best captured the singular sentiment about Artificial Intelligence the entire past week. This was prompted after a Google employee Blake Lemoine was so flabbergasted by the responses of LaMDA – a language mode AI – to his questions that he went rogue and released his interactions to the world. Google, on their…

Marvel films have changed dramatically since their origin as a sci-fi genre, turning away from science to embrace magic and fantasy says Satyen K. Bordoloi who tells us that what is good for the franchise may not be so for the world In the 2008 film Iron Man, after Tony Stark gets inside his suit for the first time, he decides to test it. Jarvis, his Artificial Intelligence assistant, complains since there are terabytes of calculations remaining before an actual flight. But Stark says, “Jarvis, sometimes you gotta run before you can walk.” That line was prophetic because fifteen years…

Hacking, till now, has been about money but for the first time a ransomware group demanded money to not overthrow an elected government of a nation, finds out Satyen K. Bordoloi Something unprecedented happened in the month of May 2022. The Conti Ransomware hacking group threatened to overthrow the newly democratically elected government of Costa Rica if they aren’t paid 20 million dollars. Perhaps it was to be expected: research has shown that the group is based out of Russia. On May 8, Rodrigo Chaves became President of Costa Rica, along with 57 other Congressmen, who were part of the…

Despite an agro economy like India being hugely reliant on cattle, animal husbandry had not received the type of digital support it needs. In the last few years though, a plethora of online apps and portals are using everything from veterinarians to Machine Learning to fill this gap finds Satyen K. Bordoloi For agrarian societies cattle rearing and trading is one the oldest extant professions. On the health of livestock, civilisations have soared or crumbled. More so in India which isn’t just the world’s largest producer of milk but has even turned cows into symbols of faith. India also has…

Every ‘expert’ commenting on Netflix’s current decline, has looked at its content as the problem. But they forget Netflix is first and foremost a tech company and the solution to its current crisis, might lie in its Artificial Intelligence, claims Satyen K. Bordoloi Anil did not know that Netflix has over 17,000 titles, 2.2 million minutes or 36,000 hours of content (2020 data) and it launched approximately 2,769 hours of content in 2019. Averaging an hour after work that he watches Netflix daily, this is enough to last him a 100 years or at least a decade of content he…

A fully autonomous car was a dream AI experts predicted would arrive almost a decade ago, yet it is proving to be a problem too hard to crack even for the best minds in the world finds out Satyen K. Bordoloi Elon Musk is considered a genius except in this viral montage video of him promising a fully autonomous car every year from 2014 to 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7oZ-AQszEI In 2014 he says, “A Tesla car, next year will probably be… 90% of your miles can be on auto.” In 2015: “We’re probably only a month away from having autonomous driving.” The…

You may not associate the sophistication of artificial intelligence with the dust and grime of farming but that’s exactly what John Deere managed to wed finds Satyen K. Bordoloi Civilization is a handmaiden to agriculture: everything we created began after humans settled down to farm and from this evolved society, culture, religion, art, music, etc. Every technology, every piece of gadget owes a debt to agriculture. For the first time in 11,000 years of civilization, technology is finally in a position to pay back. Precision agriculture i.e. the management of farming using data of various factors involved in farming to…

High costs prevent e-cycles from taking off despite India’s history as a proud cycling nation finds Satyen K. Bordoloi as he explores the solutions… Across many old railway stations nationwide or covered by tall grass in unused corners of college, or perhaps even at office campuses, you will find metal girdles into which the front wheel of a cycle can be inserted and locked. Growing up in the 80s, I’d see hundreds of cycles neatly parked on such stands outside cinema halls or factories. Today they mostly survive in our nostalgia. File Photo India has always been a nation of…

But the good news is, solutions are coming hard and fast out of the woodwork, writes Satyen K Bordoloi There’s scarcely a technology that exists without an Achilles heel. Blockchain – its promise of radically transforming almost everything we do notwithstanding – has one of the biggest ‘Kryptonite’ in the tech world: its carbon footprint. As per an online tool called the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, Bitcoin with 113 megatons of CO2 annually has a carbon footprint larger than New Zealand and comparable to that of the Czech Republic, and at 204 TWh uses power more than Chile’s consumption and…