Author: Satyen K Bordoloi

Sometimes, the wizard behind the cool AI trick isn’t a silicon-drenched algorithm, but flesh and goo humans. Satyen K. Bordoloi goes behind the scenes of this hilarious, and all too human phenomena. Elizabeth Holmes, wearing Steve Jobs-style jeans and turtlenecks, promises to revolutionize medicine. Her ‘revolutionary’ finger prick device, Edison, runs a battery of tests quickly and with just a few drops. People are wowed until they discover that Holmes is running the tests on her competitors’ old-fashioned machines behind the scenes. Edison turns out to be all smoke and mirrors, a pseudo-tech rather than a revolutionary one. Holmes is…

OpenAI’s introduction of memory to ChatGPT is set to fulfil a key promise of AI – personalization for everyone, potentially creating a trillion-dollar industry, writes to Satyen K. Bordoloi. A friend’s mother suffers from dementia. She is physically healthy, but her mind is gradually erasing everything, even her husband, who now seems like a stranger to her. The pain this causes her loved ones is immense, as she’s physically present but mentally absent. We construct our lives on the foundation of memories. Losing them means losing the essence of life, awareness, and consciousness. Life starts to come apart, when we…

Parents often hand mobile devices to their children, inadvertently exposing them to sexual exploitation and abuse that could ruin their lives, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. Before the advent of mobile and the internet, parents had simple yet strict rules for their wards. They were told not to talk to strangers or accept anything, no matter how enticing, from them. They were taught to look both ways while crossing the road and never to venture into unfamiliar places. Today, toddlers are given mobiles before they can even grasp their parents’ fingers. This means that by their teens, they’ve done everything that…

Generative AI creation apps have come to life with OpenAI’s Sora and besides other things, it is slated to change cinema beyond recognition writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. It was – perhaps still is – the most expensive action sequence ever, better than the seminal bullet-time of its prequel Matrix. Called the Burly Brawl scene from Matrix Reloaded, Neo fights an army of Agent Smiths. Because it is set in the matrix where Neo can defy laws of physics, besides martial arts chops, that scene has unbelievable camera work. The only problem: most of that scene was shot in a special…

Would you carry nuclear batteries in your phone if you didn’t have to charge it ever asks Satyen K. Bordoloi as he goes into the history of a destructive technology whose constructive use as batteries – for mobiles to spaceships – threatens to change everything. The humanoid robot Terminator T100 played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the famous franchisee, does not need to recharge. It runs on two powerful, palm-sized batteries. For the last few decades, scientists have desperately been trying to make the science fiction of a battery small yet powerful enough to run a big machine which does not…

In the previous two parts of this digital crimeverse trilogy, we highlighted 25 common ways cybercriminals can cheat you while in this Satyen K. Bordoloi tells you of digital hygiene habits to keep both your money and sanity safe. When Vishal Singh – on a working day in his company in Gurugram – got a message from his boss on WhatsApp, he wondered why the number was different. But the display photo was his boss’s so he didn’t suspect it even when the boss said he couldn’t talk as he was in the middle of a customer negotiation but needed…

In the first part of this trilogy, we talked about 10 most common ways India’s cybercriminals target us while here Satyen K. Bordoloi expands the crimeverse with 15 more ways in which they can cheat you and in the next part, how you can arm yourself against them. Last September, when Assam Police Crime Branch received a tip-off about a fake call centre in Guwahati, they believed it to be a routine job. But what Guwahati Police ended up unearthing, was a multi-crore scam that had eight illegal call centres to scam both Indians and foreigners in the guise of…

With the rise of digital India, cybercrimes have risen exponentially, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. This three-part series surveys the 25 most common ways cybercriminals try to cheat you and what you can do to protect yourself. Remember these well, for they might save you millions. 2024 began horribly for some who became victims of cybercrimes: a Bengaluru resident lost ₹96,000 trying to order alcohol online for the new year, a Mumbai actress was swindled of ₹5.79 Lakh with a fake parcel of drugs, a trader in Rajkot lost ₹5 lakhs, while sextortion and dating scams over the end of the…

Generative AI so far has depended on AI companies illegally scraping data off the net including copyrighted ones writes Satyen K. Bordoloi as he highlights both sides of lawsuits that can define the future of AI and human progress. “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,” said Ernest Hemingway. Ask ChatGPT to write in Hemingway’s style and it will do so within seconds. So, like Hemingway bled (literally as well) to gain the experiences that made his writing deep – how much did ChatGPT bleed to churn out a copy? This…

Among the many developments from 2023, Satyen K. Bordoloi picks four that will affect all of our futures irretrievably. The future, back in the past, was simpler, and fairly predictable. Study, get a job, settle down, retire and wait to die – was the routine of most lives. As each of us has observed, this does not seem to fit anymore. 2023 was the year that proved this irrevocably. Here are four fields where, so many changes occurred in 2023, that it will change everything we do going forward. Image Credit: Shutterstock GENETIC EDITING FOR COMMON CONDITIONS: 2023 will end…