Author: Satyen K Bordoloi

Spike Jonze’s Her is one of those quiet films that does not call attention to itself but whose stature would only increase with the rise of Artificial Intelligence – and our loneliness – writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. “The heart’s not like a box that gets filled up; it expands in size the more you love,” and “The past is just a story we tell ourselves,” – two of the most iconic lines in 2013’s Her, writer-director Spike Jonze gives a character we never see, yet is one whose presence defines the film and gives it its name. The ‘her’ is…

The first ever gene editing therapies to cure a disease were approved in the UK and US, heralding a new age of medicine writes Satyen K. Bordoloi as he outlines what this means not just for medicine, but life on the planet itself. The seminal 1997 film Gattaca has one fundamental flaw. In it, embryos are genetically modified to remove diseases, but no genetic treatment seems to exist for human’s post-birth. Surely, if science advanced enough to allow gene edits before birth, we could do that later as well. Despite being seminal, Gattaca made one fundamental mistake: in it embroys…

A recently launched AI-pin by the company Humane has the world excited about an AI replacement for the ‘humble’ smartphone, but Satyen K. Bordoloi looks beyond to divine into the future and draw a straight line from this device to the coming age of Personal AI. In the 2013 film ‘Her’, the protagonist Theodore installs a Machine Learning system on all his devices. He carries the AI in his shirt pocket, chats like one would a real person, and begins having romantic feelings about ‘her’. The film was seminal for multiple reasons. One is our desperate need for connections and…

It’s just been a year since ChatGPT but it has changed our very understanding of Artificial Intelligence writes Satyen K. Bordoloi while arguing that not all of what we think about AI is correct. When I began writing about Artificial Intelligence about six years ago, it was hard to get people’s attention. Most knew about AI but didn’t care enough to delve deeper even though all of them were using it, albeit indirectly. Not surprising, considering that is our culture: we use the mobile without ever wondering how that magnificent machine works. Image Credit: Ai Lib on Flickr Then, exactly…

Half a century after the Beatles played their last song together, AI helps bring a brand-new Beatles song to life finds Satyen K. Bordoloi who calls ‘Now and Then’ an AI anthem as he articulates what it means for the world, AI, art and time itself. The Beatles are, unarguably, the most popular music band in history. Their contributions via music, to art and culture among other things, are singularly unique. But it has been 53 years since John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison last recorded a song together. Yet, now, 43 years after John’s death and…

The days of an app doing only one thing seem to be over as big tech companies – X, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and even Amazon – push for super-apps writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. 20 years from now, this is the fable kids will sleep to. Once upon a time, when apps were first invented, they could do only one thing. Thus, people’s phones were crammed with hundreds of apps. Then came the modern era, and out emerged apps of power, ones that would rule the smaller apps and do multiple tasks inside one application. But, the kids won’t fall asleep,…

A female PhD scholar is battered with patriarchy, insensitivity, juvenile dress codes and what can only be described as a form of slavery, all of which hampers India’s rise as a scientific superpower, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. By every account, Kamala Bhagvat (Sohonie after marriage) was a brilliant woman. She had a BSc degree in chemistry, which in 1933 was a huge deal. She applied to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, for a research fellowship but was turned down by the then-director and Nobel Laureate Prof. C V Raman on the ground that women were not competent to pursue…

The discovery of a microorganism that edits genes in a university pool not only changes our understanding of how DNA works but also throws into spotlight the importance of saving genetic diversity on the planet, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. In many university campuses worldwide, the local pool has been the source of fun. Useful for late-night skinny dips, it also brings the occasional drunks to their senses after being dunked by fellow drunks. That one of these university pools could alter our very understanding of genes, is something no one fathomed. If the random scooping up of water from a…

A recent demonstration from scientists in China that DNA-based computing could program a single array to implement more than 100 billion distinct circuits puts the spotlight on the exciting field of DNA-based computing writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. Liu Cixin’s seminal novel ‘The Three Body Problem’ shows a way to turn humans into a computer. Three persons are labelled ‘Input 1’, ‘Input 2’, and ‘Output’. Each has a white flag and a black flag corresponding to ‘1’ and ‘0’. Based on the colour of the flag each of the Input person holds up, the Output will hold a different flag. With…

Technology – supposed to be Israel’s saviour – proved to be its Achilles heel writes Satyen K. Bordoloi as he argues that tech should never be a proxy for a political solution. The border with Gaza is supposed to be the most secure on the planet. It is guarded by an army of sensors, cameras, drones, humans, automatic weapons etc., all so advanced a bird couldn’t cross without being noticed. Then there was electronic intelligence with many believing it’s hard to find a phone in Gaza – despite just 2G network – that wasn’t under surveillance. Indeed, Israel’s surveillance technology…