AI and the risk of catastrophe
I am reminded of an episode from history involving Bertrand Russell and the U.S. writer and editor Leo Rosten. In the early 1950s, Rosten had approached Russell in London to write an article on agnosticism…
Analysis
Verifiability, access, and allocation in maths
When I was talking about this post with a friend, he asked a thought-provoking question. In the post, I’d argued that I believe it should be appropriate for mathematics to consider a solution to a…
Privileged access is bad for science
Despite some problems of its own, the ongoing Microsoft Majorana saga has been striking a pleasant contrast with the rush by artificial intelligence (AI) companies like Anthropic and OpenAI to show their proprietary models can…
Lesson learnt? None.
A particular line from the open statement mathematicians wrote against the design of the new Caltech Mathathon, due to happen in late October, has stuck with me: Mathematicians do not only prove theorems: they also…
Semiconductor nationalism
There’s a passage in an interview of former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, published by Frontline on September 1, that many people seem to have misunderstood, especially on Twitter, where — perhaps unsurprisingly — it has…
A seasonal despondency in journalism
My friend Dhiya has been writing and publishing one blog post every week for the last 87 weeks in a series she simply calls ‘dilettante’. The eighty-fifth edition focused on an issue I am currently…
The bridge AI-writing builds
From ‘Why not normalise use of AI in writing?’, by Amit Kumar, assistant professor in the Institute for Development and Communication, Chandigarh, in The Hindu, August 29, 2026: Whose authority is being protected by that…
The mathematician and the oracle
On August 24, Levent Alpöge (@__alpoge__) posted on X.com that they had solved a maths problem with Claude’s help in a way that was contrary to a human proof of it, albeit a reputedly unsatisfactory…
AI shouldn’t distract journalism into a new trap
The following is a review of Journalism in the Age of AI: From Acceleration to Reimagination by Seth C. Lewis, Rodrigo Zamith, and Tomás Dodds, available here. The authors write, and I agree, that journalism…
What does science in India feel like?
Indian society has inhabited at least three distinct structures of feeling in relation to science since independence — and they are not as continuous as one might expect.
The Meta Ray-Ban glasses and Indian law
1. India is not likely to find success by regulating hardware because (i) such regulations will be hard to enforce in practice and in principle, (ii) the regulatory regime could set up a new license…
Why launch costs dropped but may not keep dropping
In a study published in PNAS Nexus on July 14, two researchers affiliated with institutes in France, Italy, and the UK analysed more than 4,400 launches in 16 geographical entities and with 330 rocket configurations…