Will Machines Replace Human Beings? AlphaGo and DeepMind

ARTIFICIAL intelligence (AI) or machine intelligence has always been a little scary. We picture evil robots controlling the world and making human beings obsolete or, even worse, using us as energy sources as in the Matrix. The defeat by Google's DeepMind – a computer programme – of the world champion in Go, an ancient Chinese board game, has reinforced the apocalyptic vision of machines taking over the world in the popular media.Not that this vision is totally wrong. The more we transfer human skills to the machine, the more obsolescence in the work force.

Ravaging Yamuna Flood Plains: Art of Uncaring, Egoism and Cronyism

INDIA and the whole world has just witnessed the most horrible display of utter lack of concern for the environment by the Art of Living (AoL) foundation led by new-age guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar which organised a massive international cultural festival slap bang on the Yamuna floodplains in Delhi to commemorate 35 years of its functioning. The AOL organisers and its supporters at the highest echelons of the central government brazened out the storm of criticism by environmental groups, scientists, judicial bodies, large sections of the media and the general public.

US-WTO Shadow on India’s Solar Power Plans

IN the last week of February, a panel set up by the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body ruled against India on a complaint by the US in early 2013 that India’s Domestic Content Requirement (DCR) for some solar power projects violated WTO prohibitions on measures that result in “less favourable treatment” of international trade partners.

Are Software Patents Finally Dead?

LAST month, the Indian Patents Office released the revised Guidelines for Computer Related Invention (CRI Guidelines), which has finally aligned the Patents Office fully with the Indian Patents Act. This is the third time that software patents have been beaten back in India: the first with the Amendments to the Patents Act in 2005, the next, smuggling it in through the Patents Manual issued by the Patents Office, and this time, through the original CRI Guideline issued in August last year.

Strange Rafale Deal and Other Murky Acquisitions

DECISION making in India as regards military equipment acquisitions has always been opaque, murky and somewhat enigmatic. The apparent arbitrariness of decisions and technology choices, not to mention actual skulduggery, has long opened the doors to suspicion and all manners of conspiracy.

The Zika Crisis Needs a Global Response

GLOBAL concerns about a new viral pandemic have started making headlines barely weeks after resolution of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The virus responsible for panic buttons being pressed, with the WHO declaring a ‘public health emergency of international concern’, is the Zika virus. Threats to health at a global scale in the form of epidemics caused by viruses are now too frequent to view these threats as one-off events.

Lessons from the National Family Health Survey

THE Fourth National Family Health Survey (NFHS 4) was conducted in 2015 and preliminary results from a few states are now available. NFHS 4 follows similar countrywide surveys conducted in 1992 (NFHS 1), 1998 (NFHS 2), 2005 (NFHS 3). While the full report of the 2015 survey is still awaited, some preliminary inferences can be drawn from the reports now available.

CRISPR: Good Science or Evil Science?

A THREE-YEAR old technology of gene editing called CRISPR is now the focus of two major disputes. The disputes are: who (or which team) will get the Nobel Prize for this discovery, and the other, the patent rights over the technology coming out of this discovery. One is the holy grail of science; not the discovery itself, but the public accolade that goes with it.

Urban Air Pollution: Will Delhi Even Out the Odds?

THE short and temporary experiment in Delhi to combat severe air pollution by rationing road-use by personal four-wheeled vehicles on alternate days, corresponding to odd or even numbered dates and license plates, is to end this weekend. The media especially newspapers, who for once have taken good advantage of their greater ability than TV for in-depth coverage, have been full of analysis of whether the odd-even formula has worked or not.

The Trojan Horse of Free Basics

FACEBOOK is running a high profile, misleading campaign, using full page advertisements, blocks of TV time, hoardings, and Facebook itself. This campaign, estimated to cost more than Rs 400 crore, is promoting Facebook's private, proprietary platform called “Free Basics” and calling its opponents as anti-poor. In India, Facebook has tied up with Reliance Telecommunications for offering this platform.

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