Author: Satyen K Bordoloi

They are the mothers of our species, but in not being allowed to be mothers of AI, will have an adverse effect on the world, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi AI is just a computer with intelligence: it’s not supposed to discriminate as humans do. Yet, over a decade ago, when Amazon engineers developed an experimental AI tool for recruiting, the system penalised resumes that had words like “women’s” (such as “women’s chess club captain” or “women’s basketball team”), downgraded graduates of two all-women’s colleges, and consistently favoured male candidates. Despite attempts to correct this bias, Amazon eventually abandoned the project…

Starting today, social media platforms will have just three hours to remove unlawful content or risk losing their legal shield. Is this a masterstroke for online safety or the death knell for digital freedom? asks Satyen K. Bordoloi. When Rashmika Mandanna’s deepfake video went viral on social media at the end of 2023, the nation went into a tizzy. People spoke out. The authorities moved to arrest the creator. And the zeitgeist was against such violations. But just 2 years later, as AI tech has improved dramatically, I see on Instagram, deepfakes of almost every female Indian actress, doing all…

SpaceX and xAI want to lift entire data centres off Earth and into orbit, doing it easier fantasised than done, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi Those born before the Internet era think that “data in the cloud” literally means your data rests somewhere in the sky. So far, it was a joke. But if Elon Musk and a few others have it their way, your data would actually live even beyond the clouds, up in the sky. By merging his rocket company, SpaceX, and his AI venture, xAI, Elon Musk wants to enter sci-fi territory: he wants to build a constellation…

Within days of release, Clawdbot became a sensation, delivering both the promise of productivity and a security nightmare, while giving a glimpse of our agent-run future writes Satyen K. Bordoloi This seems like it could become a January AI tradition for the world: a new AI tool launches, spreads faster than a pandemic, and grabs our collective imaginations. Last January, DeepSeek’s efficiency sent US stock markets plunging into a nose-dive. This year, that honour has fallen to an agentic AI system that many are calling the best personal assistant so far. It can do everything from booking your flight and…

Generative AI is often villainised as something that will dumb people down. But new tools from AI companies are doing just the opposite, finds Satyen K. Bordoloi The 1990s were an exciting time to be a teenager. New studies and advances in learning were teaching us, kids, how to learn better. One of the key findings was the use of Mind Maps, which you used to create visual maps of a topic to better understand and remember it. The idea was that engaging the mind’s visual part would make learning better and faster. 30 years later, generative AI companies seem…

South Korea’s AI Basic Act can be looked at as both a bold first step in AI governance and also a move that could stifle AI development, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi In a hugely polarised world that we live in, if there is one thing about which there is near-perfect agreement, it is that everyone, besides the tech-bros of the world, wants AI to be regulated. Yet every attempt to do so has failed. Until now. Because, recently South Korea became the first country to pass a comprehensive law to regulate AI. On January 22, a law came into force…

Free for all, can easily become free fall as the world’s richest man is realising in extremely interesting ways, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi Elon Musk, as the world knows, is not a man who backs down in the light of the truth. He double-downs instead. This has been in ample view in a particular aspect of the culture war: he has positioned himself as a free-speech absolutist, name-calling anyone who said that absolute power corrupts absolutely and that even free-speech demands certain guardrails. He has abused anyone who asked for the same and fired every single fact checker or moderator…

AI companies are rolling out AI assist features that is giving privacy advocates their worst nightmare in years, finds Satyen K. Bordoloi Data is the new oil, is now an old adage. That doesn’t mean the AI industry, which needs as much data as possible to train its systems, has solved the data problem. They still need more data and don’t know where to get it after scraping everything on the net, in your personal social media feeds, and even on online piracy sites. Now, if some of the moves by some of the AI companies are to be believed…

In a stunning reversal, the studio that sued AI companies for piracy is now paying them billions; does that mean that the age of human-led storytelling is over, asks Satyen K. Bordoloi. In mid-2023, Hollywood took up arms against AI, with both the writers and actors striking against the tech, and producers seriously considering their objections. But in 2025, multiple deals between Hollywood studios and AI companies have rocked the global filmmaking capital. The biggest of them was when the Walt Disney Company, with one of the most substantial holdings of intellectual property, revealed that it was not just embracing…

Not content with making chips that shape our future, NVIDIA is trying to create, and own our autonomous vehicle future with a new platform and multiple open-source tools, finds Satyen K. Bordoloi NVIDIA became the world’s first company to reach $1 trillion, then $2 trillion, $3 trillion, $4 trillion, and in October 2025, the first to achieve $5 trillion in market capitalisation. They did this by riding the data centre boom driven by the increased use of generative AI over the last three years. But owning the cloud is not enough for them, as they make a parallel, monumental bet…