Extracts from a Diary

Too Long; Didn’t Read (TL;DR): The Air Quality issue hasn’t been solved in Delhi-NCR/North India for decade+. Politicians would care if it were a major electoral issue or a major ‘interest groups’ issue. Residents don’t have enough exit options (alternate cities to move to).  Optimism : More people aware of the fact that there’s a problem. People willing to pay. Money & people => possibility of and motivation for technological, political, or social solution.  Prediction : Delhi will halve its current PM2.5 particulate matter in 8 years. But, it requires for the issue to become a voter priority. Long; Do Read: Introduction For the past few years, starting in mid-October, a few things happen without fail in significant parts of North India (and especially Delhi): Delhi skyline changes to the yellow-orangish tint, often seen in Hollywood/Netflix movies when they are depicting Mexico countless (and much-needed!) think pieces around: cause of the dangerously high AQI (at tim...

The nuclear age left radioactive traces in all modern steel. The LLM age is doing the same to digital content. Some analogies and lessons from that. Radioactive Signature on Steel From around 1945 onwards, in specialised niches and applications, there came up a need for specialised steel — steel that was made from before 1945. You see, after the nuclear tests and detonations, there exists a certain level of diffused background radiation in atmosphere. While these detonations happened in US and Japan, initially, followed by USSR and elsewhere, the radiation spread quickly and to somewhat uniform levels, throughout the world. The typical steel-making process uses atmospheric oxygen. And this background radiation in atmosphere leaks into the steel-making process. All steel made after 1945 has a certain level of radioactive traces (or its radioactive signature) slightly and measurably higher than for steel made before that cut-off. There are a set of highly sensitive, niche applications, w...

“AI is coming for your job!” “Government will need to step in and give a universal basic income (UBI) to everyone!” “There will be mass unemployment and civil unrest!” Or so I keep hearing these days in different groups. I am a bit more sceptical. I am simultaneously hyped about and underwhelmed by AI. Image generated using ChatGPT Some Famously Wrong Predictions We overestimate what can happen in the short run and underestimate what does in the long run. There are predictions from the 1950s, attributed to IBM’s then chairman, estimating the market size of computers to be 5 units. Not 5 million, not 5 thousand. Just 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. IBM, probably in the 1980s, thought it would be mind-boggling if there were a use case of more than 128KBs memory. Bill Gates thought there was little commercial potential for this thing called the internet in 1990s, and predicted the end of spam emails “in two years,” in 2004. The prediction about the internet was echoed by subsequent Nobel laureate in E...

Introduction: How an AC Explains More Than You Think It’s peak summer. The temperature outside is 37°C. You’ve just switched on the AC and set it to cool to 24°C. A sensor detects the external temperature and notes it to be above the target temperature. The controller receives observes this gap and commands the system (in this case the cooling fan) to start the cooling effect. The fan begins cooling, initially with greater intensity due to the high error signal. A sensor constantly checks the room temperature. Gradually, the error signal shrinks, the fan slows, and eventually runs at the speed needed to maintain the target temperature. This post isn’t about how ACs cool a room; it’s about how most complex systems — teams, habits, cravings, cultures, and many other things — behave. We often think the world runs on linear relations and straight causal links. Instead, it runs on loops. This generalised flow: Goal → Sensing → Action → Feedback → Adjustment → Sensing → Repeat governs not j...