Done in Less than four minutes and with a pen!
“The world is so sensitive you see!
It’s a fine balance between you and me!
Sometimes it’s nice to be like a river!
Sometimes it’s better to be calm like the deep sea!”
Everyone remembers 1983 especially Indians since that was the year in which we won the cricket world cup!
But (you expected that didn’t ya!); the same year there was a bug which could have started a world war with disastrous consequences! And we were saved only because of a gut feeling!
read on!
So all we remember about 1983 was the world cup and the fact that it established India as one of the top players in the world! The supremacy of South African team was broken and the respect which the team got has continued even till now!
There have been innumerable stories and movies on the amazing victory not to mention how we adored Kapil and Sunny after that!
Cricket became so famous that it was the go to game in any break! The team after the win was one of the best teams ever and even now people talk about the win with nostalgia! There is no one in India who has not played cricket when he was young after 1983! He or she may not be good at it but would have definitely played!
Batting is something everyone likes to do while fielding is a bore! But then cricket was our national pastime after 1983!
This in spite of the fact that there was no direct TV broadcast!
But (unexpected!); the year also had a near miss of epic proportions!
In the novel Nexus and in the novel Scary smart; the authors talk about how AI will be a threat and how!
With this example the point is driven more strongly across!
So in 1983, Soviet commanders were alerted with a message that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles at them!
Imagine you are the person who gets this message and if you were a little hot headed or even more or less ‘normal’; the counter reaction would be scary!
The issue was that a bug in the software had interpreted what the Soviet early-warning satellites picked up as a hostile attack, when in fact it was nothing more than sunlight reflecting off the cloud tops!
Soviet protocol necessitated that Russia respond decisively, launching its entire nuclear arsenal before any US missile detonations could disable their response capability!
This catastrophic error could have launched a world war that would have dwarfed the damage caused by the Second World War!
Of course nothing of the sort happened all because of the level headedness of an army officer!
The officer in question was Lt Col. Stanislav Petrov, who intercepted the messages and flagged them as faulty! He reasoned that if the US was really attacking, they would launch more than five missiles! Now that is some amazing expectation I must say!
He further said that he had a funny feeling in his gut that led him to investigate further! How many times you would have had this feeling and acted upon it! Would you expect an AI to have a funny feeling! It may tell you to stop ‘feeling funny!’ Talking about feeling and funny and so many emotions reminds me of Shankar Nagarakatte or Shankar Nag!
Now be thankful to Petrov and sleep!
Shubh ratri!
ramadocblog 