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The coming wave by Michael Bhaskar and Mustafa Suleyman

E book

non fiction! Which is why it is so scary!

The intro is the best! A prediction of the future of AI was written so well and the dangers of AI having control over our life and future! The scary thing was that the intro was written by an AI!

Suleyman is the founder of a company called the Deep Mind which was the leader in AI till it was acquired by Google for a staggering 400 million USD! Then after different roles he is now the part of the AI team of Microsoft!

He tells even in 2010, the AI wave is actually a tsunami!

Anyone and everyone has access to knowledge on the know how! How to create DNA strands using an assembled machine with a DYI instruction freely available online if you are willing to watch an ad! With that a single person has the capability to kill a billion people!

Pessimism aversion is the emotional response an ingrained gut refusal to accept the possibility of seriously destabilising outcomes!

In a satirical way the author starts the first part with a development of technology and names this as Homo Technologicus!

Development of automobiles with an amazing history of Benz and Ford!

Then about Nuclear proliferation and the first atomic bomb developed 12 years after the eminent Physicist told in full confidence about the impossibility of a bomb! He categorically told that anyone who is saying that they can develop atomic bomb is actually taking moonshine! For the teetotalers like me, Moonshine is a whisky!

Now the warhead developed in the early years were maintained by obsolete hardware chips! A single error would actually mean the end of the world! Plus the fact that it has been told that the United States has ‘Lost’ at least ‘three’ nuclear weapons! Now that is a scary fact!

How even now itself many computer techs use ChatGPT for writing codes and then only supervise! Very soon writing codes will be relegated to them completely!

The human genome project started in 1988 and completed in 2003 after completing over 92 percent!

The cost of genetic testing fell from a Billion dollars to less than a 1000!
So in the future you can have a gene testing or modifying lab in your garage!

CRISPr edits DNA and sequences it! Here he tells about the progress in Genetic engineering along with the example of two illegally produced genetically engineered babies!

The quantum computer by google was a tech marvel! Now you have many!

The sputnik influence on US arms race is like the influence of AI on China which has not emerged leader in AI

Even the AlphaGo was like the sputnik influence on China which has made them move at an amazing speed!

Huge amount of data is public like GitHub has 190 million repositories of code!

Research is the key! The worldwide research spending is 700 billion annually! Amazon’s R and D budget itself is around 78 billion dollars!
Amazon already has a auto bot which does amazing work!

The chief aim of the book is to warn about the dangers of AI from the expert in AI and also some suggestions on how to contain or control the AI

How being a part of Google he was responsible for the legal team which did not happen though!

Then about the containment issue of AI and data! This was a scary section! Luckily he also gives some solutions!

About how a rogue person with an example to boot can actually use AI for nefarious purposes! With an example which was quite recent and scary!

How we know have amazing nuclear weapons, bioweapons and data weapons!

We can do genetic engineering!

The example of Lulu and Nana, the first genetically illegally modified babies are perfect examples of the same!

The best part of the novel according to me was his opinion of India! Now while Yuval had positives and negatives; Suleiman was all positive and I loved it!

I am reproducing a section verbatim for Indians!

This is after he spoke of the superpowers US, China and EU;

India is an obvious fourth pillar to a new global order of giants, alongside the United States, China, and the EU. Its population is young and entrepreneurial, increasingly urbanized, and ever more connected and tech savvy.
By 2030 its economy will have passed those of countries like the U.K., Germany, and Japan to be the third largest in the world; by 2050, it will be worth $30 trillion!
Its government is determined to make Indian tech a reality. Through its Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-Reliant India) program, India’s government is working to ensure the world’s most populous country achieves ownership of core technology systems competitive with the United States and China. Under it, India established partnerships with, for example, Japan on Al and robotics, as well as Israel for drones and unmanned aerial vehicles. Prepare for an Indian wave!

This section was bliss for me!

He concludes how when the machine looms were being built there were a group of people who formed an army and used to regularly destroy such machines! In spite of huge destructions though, the machines finally won!
In fact it actually lead to an improvement of the quality of life of the worker’s children and grandkids!

The author concludes that any modern tech will definitely come and we cannot stop it for long! He just hopes that the tech will be safe!

The whole book if is hundred percent then over 30 percent is just the references! That will tell you of the amount of research which has gone in this book!

Unlike Yuval though who is actually not an expert in tech; the authors here are leaders in AI! But the text is bland and slow and very very dull!

This whole novel actually reads like a textbook and feels like one! Full of facts and boring data!

We like reading Yuval’s books because he made history interesting! It was like gossip! This novel may be having more facts and is much more accurate but the flow will make you sleep!

But wake up! The AI wave is coming!

“It goes on and on like a clock
If it stops then that’s a big shock
Then again it sometimes get’s speed hikes
When the eyes see what it likes!”

Did you know that the heart does not lie!

Many times you wonder how a certain feed in your social media comes in accordance to your taste which you have not mentioned anywhere or to anyone!

There may be many reasons and one of them is your amazing new smart watch!

read on!

There is this amazing series called the Sherlock in BBC starring Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch in which Irene almost traps him and his brother and her phone lock is the key!

You had to complete the line I am —-locked!
They had tried different combination but it did not work!

That is when he, like the modern AI tells about this amazing analysis he does!

He had gone near her and gently touched her hand. She thought he was comforting her, but in fact he was measuring her heart rate!

There was a transient raise in the rate with which Sherlock got to know that Irene has feelings towards him! The password was I am SHERlocked!

Monitor heart rate and response and then data! This is one of the ways how AI gets you! The crime of being a human!

Now, modern smartwatches use a flashing green light to measure your heart rate from your wrist. Spectroscopy tells us that blood absorbs green light because red and green are opposite each other on the colour wheel.
The rear of the smartwatch contains an optical sensor to detect the reflected light. The main difference from spectrometers is that the light source and detector are positioned on the same side in smartwatches, while they are opposite each other in spectrometers.

Measuring heart rate using light is called photoplethysmography. The device measures the change in concentration of red blood cells as the blood vessels expand and contract – ie expanded blood vessels absorb more green light, contracted blood vessels absorb less green light. The detector measures the reflected light and a software algorithm converts the changes in light intensity into your pulse rate!

The newest devices and software use advanced algorithms to monitor pulse rate data and detect issues such as atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat)!

The accuracy and reliability of the algorithms for regular health monitoring is still not a hundred percent accurate data (no data is!) mainly due to variations that could be caused by different skin pigmentations but it has been found that more than a third of participants who were notified of an irregular pulse by their smartwatch had atrial fibrillation!

Of course your smart watch manufacturer does not only have your health as his or her focus!
The focus point is the change in heart rate!
When you see a thing or video or even a photo you like, there is a change in your heart rate and beat and this is caught by the watch and the associated app! You of course give full permission to everything and then the market knows what you like!

The use of heart rate variability recordings can improve two major constraints of traditional marketing methodologies by providing: (1) ease of continuous measurement for unconscious level processing of stimuli in a naturalistic setting; and (2) quantitative and robust physiological measurements related to consumers!

Of course this was mentioned in the novel Nexus by Yuval but if you think this is new! Well read this article which came more than nine years ago!

So Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer came head-to-head at the Wimbledon men’s final. While the match between the world’s No 1 and No 2 players lacked the sharp-edged suspense of their 2012 Wimbledon semi-final showdown, it was nonetheless a display of stunning, exhilarating, heart-pumping tennis!

The match’s most suspenseful moment was the second-set tiebreak, in which Federer won 10-8, tying the game at one set all. But Djokovic went on to easily cinch the next two sets, winning the match!

As Djokovic cruised toward the Wimbledon title, his fans’ heart rates remained regular!
This wasn’t just speculation; a whole team was recording for Jaguar and analyzing the heart rate variability, localized audio, motion and skin temperature of 20 fans in the crowd, via sensor-equipped cuffs!
The goal was to create an interactive display of the crowd’s fluctuating emotions at the match, which Jaguar could then use living ad!

While the cuff could not say if a person felt tense, surprised or excited, analyzing the data points within the context of a tennis match provided a solid window into interpreting emotion!
Apparently a change in heart rate variability is a good signal that there has been a shift!
During tense moments, people moved less, while heart rates tended to quicken when a person’s favorite player was in trouble, like after a botched serve or before a match point. When players were in control, heart rates remained regular!

From the data, analysts could infer a spectator’s emotional response to each point, and from there, infer his or her chosen player!

Another company investigating the effect of heart rate on people launched a similar program at Cannes, in which it gave 100 Apple watches to attendees!
Imagine getting an Apple watch just to attend Cannes! But nothing in life is free! The app and the watch collected their biometric data over the course of three days, analyzed it, and created an engagement map of the festival!

These were baby steps in the marketing analysis but if the market can know your sweat and pulse and additional information, they can predict: are you feeling happy, sad, excited! Add location data and browsing history, and they know where you are, and how you are feeling!

The iPhone has the location turned on always and most android phones also follow the same!

Now advertisers have long worked to determine consumer mindset, and in recent years, the available techniques have grown more sophisticated. There is an emotion measurement startup which uses face-reading software to analyze micro expressions, working with marketers and brands to expose consumers’ unfiltered sentiment! To date, the company’s software algorithm has analyzed more than 2.7 million faces. Clients have included Coca-Cola, Unilever, Mars, Kellogg and CBS. Its bread and butter is market research!

Their technology records individuals’ facial expressions as they watch an ad! They can then see frame-by-frame, moment by moment, what these facial expressions reveal, measure them and provide analytics!

Meanwhile, advertisers are able to access and mine a trove of information, compiling data points – such as consumers’ location, browsing history, purchase history, and the time of day – to build a sophisticated user profile!

Meanwhile apps such as Facebook and other social media apps that require a login and are linked to consumers’ IDs allow third-party mobile ad networks to target users outside the app, using their app data!
It’s why Facebook can be effective and charge a premium, because it can help you target the right people! That is how FB gets its moolah! You are the product!

Nothing is free!

So if you do not want them to get your information then use the LCD watch, use a face mask, gloves, and maybe a helmet next time you browse the reels feed! Or just forget it and go where the heart goes! Of course when it comes to heart and soul; few can come close to the acting powerhouse which is the birthday celebrity Krishna Kumar “Kay Kay” Menon!
Just the other day saw the movie The Gazi attack and my heart rate was up!

Now try to turn off the listeners and watchers and heart rate measurers and sleep! all the best!

Shubh ratri!

“It doesn’t let you sleep you move! 

It’s not music to make you groove!

It will make you get up and fight! 

Cause that’s what makes the dream and day unite!”

This is one thing which only humans can do!

Well; there are a lots of things which only humans can do! Like tell a lie or make an imaginative story for example! But this is the only thing which only humans can do when they are sleeping!

or is it?

read on!

Of course the first question is very self explanatory! The dream! 

It has often been said that dream is not what you have when you sleep but the one that does not allow you to sleep!

That of course it the metaphorical dream!

The actual dream is a phenomenon which happens at specific time or stage of your sleep! On average, most people dream for around two hours per night. Dreaming can happen during any stage of sleep, but dreams are the most prolific and intense during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage.

During the REM sleep stage, brain activity increases considerably compared to the non-REM stages, which helps explain the distinct types of dreaming 

during these stages. Dreams during REM sleep are typically more vivid, fantastical, bizarre even though they may involve elements of waking life. 

By contrast, non-REM dreams tend to involve more coherent content that involves thoughts or memories grounded to a specific time and place.

REM sleep is not distributed evenly through the night. The majority of REM sleep happens during the second half of a normal sleep period, which means that dreaming tends to be concentrated in the hours before waking up!

Which is why you do remember the dream in the morning but over a period of  time you tend to forget them! Short-term memory areas are active during REM sleep, but those only hang on to memories for about 30 seconds. 

You would also remember dream depending on a host of factors including lifestyle factors, sleep hygiene practices, and differences in brain physiology!

You can also remember a dream if the theme of the dream in recurrent or the incidents are similar. What you read or see before you sleep has a great influence on the content of your dream!

If you recall and write your dream immediately after you get up then you would remember your dream more. Dreams are also dependent on your imagination and state of mind! But why we do dream when we sleep when there is actually no point is still not known!

The most prominent theory is that dreams help us to process and consolidate information from the previous day. However, other theories have suggested that dreams are critical for emotional processing, creativity, and self-knowledge!

Of course when you have such vague theories then you know that no one is sure!

Another aspect of dream in the paralysis! You see that scary looking person coming towards you and you try to move or scream but you can’t! No voice comes and your body just freezes over! Then you suddenly get up to realise that it was a dream! 

And what you felt is sleep paralysis! Sleep paralysis is a feeling of being conscious but unable to move. It occurs when a person passes between stages of wakefulness and sleep. During these transitions, you may be unable to move or speak for a few seconds up to a few minutes. Some people may also feel pressure or a sense of choking. 

Another shocking aspect of dream is the fall! How you fall from a building or a high place with a thud and you ‘feel’ that thud in the sleep! 

Or when you hit someone or get hit by someone! Like Neo in Matrix; you do feel the pain at that moment! 

You sometimes even try to fight back if you could overcome the sleep paralysis! Once I even punched my brother in sleep! (At least that is the official story since I could never punch him otherwise!)!

So just when you thought that only you can dream, comes the spider! not spiderman! 

So researchers noted how some young jumping spiders dangle by a thread through the night, in a box, in a laboratory. Every so often, their legs curl and their spinnerets twitch. The retinas of their eyes, visible through their translucent exoskeletons, shift back and forth!

What these spiders were doing seems to be resembling – very closely – REM sleep! The sleeping animal’s eyes dart about unpredictably, among other features is a feature of REM sleep!

REM is when most dreaming happens, particularly the most vivid dreams. Now this may mean that if spiders have REM sleep, might dreams also unfold in their little-seed-size brains!?

Researchers have reported on the retina-swivelling spiders and training cameras on 34 spiders, they found that the creatures had brief REM-like spells about every 17 minutes. The eye-darting behaviour was specific to these bouts: it didn’t happen at times in the night when the jumping spiders stirred, stretched, readjusted their silk lines or cleaned themselves with a brush of a leg!

Today, scientists are finding signs of REM sleep in a broader array of animals than ever before: in spiders, lizards, cuttlefish, zebrafish! Like evolution; dreams also has begun in the sea! Watch out! 

Then again it was ages back when the Greek philosopher Aristotle said that almost all other animals are clearly observed to partake in sleep, whether they are aquatic, aerial, or terrestrial!

He added that it would appear that not only do men dream, but horses also, and dogs, and oxen; aye, and sheep, and goats, and all viviparous quadrupeds; and dogs show their dreaming by barking in their sleep!

So maybe the difference is that only Humans may remember what they dream!? Let us hope so! If a dog dreamt that he was flying and remembered it then it may not bode well into the tech of things!

Of course some things do make us unique! Like even if it sings like a dream, a bird cannot compose and make music like the legend Sachin Dev Burman! By the way did you know that he was Royalty? His father was a king and his mother, a queen! Of course he can be called as the king amongts musicians for ever! 

Now see something nice or read something knowledgeable like a blog perhaps (wink wink!) and sleep!

Shubh ratri!

“So many things we can’t explain
We can try and cry but all in vain!
Did evolution really miss the bus!?
Are there aliens living among us!?”

In a Novel called Humans are not from Earth; Dr Ellis Silver gave an extensive ‘scientific’ account on how Humans are not from Earth! How they have so many characters which actually makes them ‘alien’!

In fact in the novel he casually mentioned how he has met two ‘aliens’ during his research in a ‘secret’ facility!

Now that is an open discussion! But did you know there is a being on earth which can almost be called an alien?

This being has three hearts and blue blood!

And no! It is not science fiction! But fact!

read on!

Of course you cannot see this being or creature so commonly since it is found only in the sea!

But there is one member of this family who not only is unique but also a grand predictor! Yes! He could tell the future!

This slimy creature does not have a backbone so there has been records where in spite of its huge size, it simply disappeared into a small hole never to be seen again!

Depending on the species, they come in various sizes, from one inch to 30ft long!

In some stories, they have been shown as huge monsters who can gobble up a ship! Whether they are inspired by real ‘aliens’ or not is anyone’s guess!

We humans and most other ‘earth’ dwellers have blood which is iron based which is why it is red! But these ‘aliens’ have blue blood because their blood is copper based!

By the way they are also very intelligent which is not surprising since they have not one but nine brains! a central brain between their eyes and a mini one in each arm. This brain tissue is notoriously fuel intensive! Talk about a brainiac!

They have been known to use these brains to use tools, open jars, complete mazes, and even recognise individual human faces!

And by the way they can also change colours!
Their skin contains thousands of specialized cells that allow them to change color. Changing color helps them to camouflage into their surroundings to avoid danger. These cells are called chromatophores, and each chromatophore has a sac at the center which is filled with pigments of red, yellow, black, or brown. They can change color in less than 30milliseconds!

In case you are wondering if that is all then they also have in built shooters!

Alright then enough suspense!

The super ‘alien’ creature is the octopus!

These super amazing creatures have arms which are lined with hundreds of suckers. They use these suckers to grab and hold things. The suckers are incredibly strong; The suckers on a Giant Pacific octopus for example can hold 35lbs each!

Also a bored octopuses will often eat their own arms. This is called autophagy! And their arms do grow back without any loss of function in case you are wondering why you do not see bored octopuses with no or less number of arms!

An octopus will release a dark colored ink to protect itself when it feels in danger. The cloud of ink confuses predators and hides the octopus while it makes a quick getaway!

Also during reproduction the male is known to have an extra long and usually keeps a distance like an alien! Now this is not sexist! It is an adaptation that has occurred due to females often killing and eating the males during or after mating!

Octopuses not only have the ability to change color, they can also change their skin’s texture, too. Using papillae, which contract and draw soft tissue to the surface, the octopus can blend in better with corals and rocks! So if you see a moving rock or a coral, it may not always be magic! It may be alien!

Finally lets talk about Paul the Octopus who who predicted the results of international association football matches. Accurate predictions in the 2010 World Cup brought him worldwide attention as an animal oracle!

During divinations, Paul’s keepers would present him with two food-containing boxes decorated with the flags of the teams in an upcoming match. Whichever box Paul ate from first was considered his prediction for which team would win the match!

IN FIFA2010 his prediction was 9 correct out of 9! Maybe some alien tech!? Of course there may be some explanation! It is not Harry Potter you see! Which reminds me of the celebrity of the day Dame Margaret Natalie Smith!

The dame was witty and quick and a very lovable character in Harry! Even otherwise her witty dialogue delivery was quirky and funny!

She will be missed!

Oh by the way the monster in the famous novel twenty thousand leagues under the sea by Jules Verne was NOT an octopus but a squid!
More on that other alien some other day!

Shubh Ratri!

“The end is the same no matter which way you take
There can be only one answer, no mistake!
That’s the beauty of a mathematical equation!
In every way all you can see is perfection!”

By now you must have understood at least from my blogs and sketches that no one is perfect! All are mortals are imperfect and imperfection is the key!

But (perfect prediction that a but was coming!); there are some number which are called perfect numbers!

But (this but was unexpected!); there exist a problem in mathematics among many other problems which has not been solved for the past 2000 years or so!

read on!

When we were young (er!); and we used to study in the night for examinations, the one trick I used to do when I used to feel sleepy was to start working on some mathematical problems!

I used to love mathematics (still do!) and solving them used to really make me awake and active!

Mathematics was also one of the few subjects where there was only one right answer and many ways to get it! It was like religion! So many ways to get the same destination!

Another cool thing was if you have done the mathematics examination well then that was one of the very few subjects where you can score full marks which in KV was a cool thing to do!

Many times even if you do not get the final solution, even if you write the steps properly you can still score marks!

So late night when you feel sleepy and then solve a couple of mathematical problems even if you know them already; the sight of the final correct answer used to give me a amazing pleasure and sense of achievement!

It was one of the few work or job in the world which we could confidently and actually complete! A feeling of closure given by an amazing subject!

Though I have changed multiple schools, in all of them my favourite subjects and teachers have most of the times been my mathematics teacher and I was lucky to have been their favourite student once in a while!

The only issue was when you solve a problem and know that you have solved it wrong almost immediately! The feeling that is real! There is only one right answer to any mathematics problem!

Sometimes you would have done the problems properly in the rough and not noted it same to same in the final draft! Every symbol and every number has a perfect place and there is only one way to represent the answer!

Mathematics was perfect in every sense!

Now did you know that there are some numbers in Mathematics which are called perfect numbers!?

A number is perfect if it is a positive integer, n, whose divisors add up to exactly twice the number itself, 2n. Or if you do not count the number itself then all its divisors except the number itself add up to the number!
The first and simplest example is 6, since its divisors — 1, 2, 3 and 6 — add up to 12, or 2 times 6. Or if you only include the divisor and not the number; 1, 2 and 3 when added give 6!

You would think that these numbers are very common! Well they are not! In fact in the first ten thousand numbers there are only 4 perfect numbers! Two of them are less than 100!

Then comes 28, whose divisors of 1, 2, 4, 7, 14 and 28 add up to 56. Or if you use only the divisors then 1, 2, 4, 7, 14 add up to 28!

If you are free you can try to find out more! But let me tell you that the next
examples are 496 and 8,128!

There are apparently several formulas to find the perfect number and Euclid devised a formula for generating even perfect numbers long back!

Before that you must know about Mersenne prime!

Mersenne prime is a prime number that is one less than a power of two.
That is, it is a prime number of the form Mn = 2n − 1 for some integer n.
They are named after Marin Mersenne, a French Minim friar, who studied them in the early 17th century. If n is a composite number then so is 2n − 1. Therefore, an equivalent definition of the Mersenne primes is that they are the prime numbers of the form Mp = 2p − 1 for some prime p.

Mersenne primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31! You can see that these are not the perfect numbers! But there is a theorem which relates them!

The Euclid–Euler theorem is a theorem in number theory that relates perfect numbers to Mersenne primes. It states that an even number is perfect if and only if it has the form 2p−1(2p − 1), where 2p − 1 is a prime number.

So if p and 2p − 1 are prime numbers (whose only divisors are 1 and themselves), then 2p−1(2p − 1) is a perfect number.

Do not get confused (like me!) now see this example;

The text here does not allow p to be on the upper part of 2!

Please read the formula as 2 (raised to the power of p-1) multiplied by (2 raised to the power of p and the product is subtracted by 1!)

If p is 2, the formula gives you 21 × (22 − 1) or 6, and if p is 3, you get 22 × (23 − 1) or 28 — the first two perfect numbers.

Euler proved 2,000 years later that this formula actually generates every even perfect number, though it is still unknown whether the set of even perfect numbers is finite or infinite!

A Japanese publishing house Nanairosha’s offered a strange book that had become surprisingly popular!

In just four days, some 1,500 copies of the book were sold !
The book, “The Biggest Prime Number in 2017”, contains just one thing — a newly discovered prime number that has broken the record for the largest ever found, coming in at a whopping 23,249,425 digits that covers the 791 pages in the book! In fine print by the way!

As far as the largest known prime number is concerned; as of now the largest known prime number is 282,589,933 − 1, a number which has 24,862,048 digits when written in base 10. It was found via a computer volunteered by Patrick Laroche of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search!

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search has also helped in finding more and more prime and perfect numbers!

But! (The final but for now!); the issue or the problem which is not solved for ages now is the question whether there is a number which is perfect which is an odd number! So are there any odd perfect numbers?
It is unknown whether any odd perfect numbers exist!

Let us hope that the 2000 year old problem can be solved soon!
The world of mathematics is divided into two camps; one who believe it exists or can be solved and can be found while the other does not!
Now that does some odd! It’s not Odd though but perfect fact that the birthday celebrity Darshan Jariwala is a great actor! Just his expressions make me laugh!

Now be a perfect person and try to sleep on time!
Shubh ratri!

“Some may be a little heavy

Someone may be a little light

Being imperfect is a human being 

Just remember tis all right!”

Do you know who are Lulu and Nana?

By the way they apparently cannot get HIV!

Curious and puzzled!?

read on!

So apparently there is a gene called CCR5 which actually helps the HIV virus enter a healthy cells! Now what if you have a means by which you could disable this gene which then would make the virus not able to enter the healthy cell and you would have a natural immunity to HIV!

That will be like a super power! 

Now it is not like Nature has not done this type of genetic modifications before since there is a great example of this natural gene splicing which makes so much sense!

Like the presence of a disease called the sickle cell anemia in areas endemic to malaria! Apparently these individuals get either a milder form of the disease or in some cases have a natural resistance to malaria! More on that in another blog!

Now coming to Lulu and Nana!

These are the first human twins whose ‘genes’ had been ‘edited’ at the embryonic stage to make them resistant to HIV

The twin’s father was  had HIV and that is when the story gets interesting!

By the way this whole process is and has been unethical, illegal and frankly scary! The ‘scientist’ or the researcher who did this, is now in the prison!

Historically it has been several years since this was done. The twins were born in October 2018 and the researcher was He Jiankui!

He Jiankui was a Chinese researcher and ex-professor at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China. 

He claimed to have created the first germline edited babies. 

There have been several investigations in the case and apparently the ‘facts’ and ‘claims’ are not clear!

Some have identified many problems with the work.

The most prevalent was widespread mosaicism in both twins. 

This means the edits to the gene were not displayed uniformly in cells, the changes made showed up differently in different cells, and so some parts of their bodies may contain the edits He made, some may contain other edits, and others no edits at all!

He also only managed to edit half of Lulu’s CCR5 genes, and the rest are apparently completely normal, meaning she is either heterozygous (every cell in her body has one normal copy of CCR5 and one edited copy) or mosaic (half her cells have two edited copies and the other half have two normal copies) for the edited CCR5 gene now!

It is apparent that both twins could be fully vulnerable to HIV! Much ‘ado’ about nothing you would think!

 Even worse, there is no way to tell whether this is the case or not, meaning there is no ‘ADVANTAGE’ to HE’s work! 

“Although the twins’ father had HIV, they were at virtually no risk of contracting HIV. 

If they remain HIV-negative, there is no way to show it had anything to do with the editing that was done”!

‘He’ deactivated a perfectly normal gene attempting to reduce the risk of a disease neither child had, and one that could be controlled with antiviral drugs and just normal routine precautions! 

Even if the attempt had been successful, the deactivation of CCR5 does not bestow complete immunity to HIV, as some strains can enter healthy cells through a different protein altogether!

When assessing the embryos for edits, a few cells were taken, and their DNA was analysed. The remaining 200-300 cells, which went on to multiply and make up Lulu and Nana, were not assessed and so it is possible off-target edits may be present in them. If so, there are risks these edits could cause problems such as cancer and heart disease, and they may even be passed onto the twins’ future children!

So a poorly done edit by an inexperienced researcher could have actually made the matter worse! 

International committees brought together by the World Health Organisation have been trying to put together better regulatory frameworks regarding germline editing and for now this is the only real-world example of human germline editing! 

It has to be made sure that this does not happen again since at the genetic level you are playing with the factors responsible for creation of life of which we have very limited knowledge!

The above incident was mentioned in the novel coming wave! Unfortunately in this and another novel Nexus, it has also been suggested of using such gene modification techniques to create an ‘evil’ new virus! 

Now advancement and new innovations are vital to any industry but it must be done with caution and responsibility. In the quest of making a ‘perfect’ human you should not end up with ‘the Frankenstein’s monster!”. 

Here also remember that it is not the Monster who is at fault, but the creator!

By the way it has also come to light that a third child was born by these ‘experiments’ in 2019! 

For now of course a South China Morning Post reported that all three children are doing well. “They have a normal, peaceful, and undisturbed life,”!

Of course Lulu and Nana are not their real names! If you know their real names or identity then please keep it to yourself! Like how everyone kept the secret that the Pokkiri Mahesh in the movie directed by birthday celebrity Petla “Puri” Jagannadh Pokkiri is actually a cop!

Now be happy that you cannot be genetically modified now and sleep!

Shubh Ratri!

“The wheels go round and round
Some go silent some make a loud sound!
It’s not the end but the trip you see!
Which makes you smile and glee!”

Wife took her husband’s new invention without her husband’s knowledge to see her mother!

This lead to the one of the biggest breakthrough in the modern world!

sounds fishy!

read on!

This happened way back in 1888!

So, on 5 August 1888, 39-year-old Bertha drove from Mannheim to Pforzheim with her sons Richard and Eugen, thirteen and fifteen years old respectively, in a ‘Vehicle’, without telling her husband and without permission of the authorities, thus becoming the first person to drive an automobile a significant distance. Now before the Feminists jump on me who is also a strong supporter of women’s rights; let me remind that it was 1888 and the husband’s permission was required for safety reasons primarily!

Following wagon tracks, this pioneering tour covered a one-way distance of about 106 km.

Although the ostensible purpose of the trip was to visit her mother, Bertha had other motives – to prove to her husband, who had failed to adequately consider marketing his invention, that the ‘vehicle’ in which they both had heavily invested would become a financial success once it was shown to be useful to the general public; and to give her husband the confidence that his constructions had a future! So all was good in the marital area!

The account of the trip has been reproduced without much changes!

She left Mannheim around dawn, solving numerous problems along the way. Bertha demonstrated her significant technical capabilities on this journey. With no fuel tank and only a 4.5-litre supply of petrol in the carburetor, she had to find ligroin, the petroleum solvent needed for the ‘vehicle’ to run.
The solvent was only available at apothecary shops, so she stopped in Wiesloch at the city pharmacy to purchase the fuel.
At the time, petrol and other fuels could only be bought from chemists and so this is how the chemist in Wiesloch became the first fuel station in the world!

She cleaned a blocked fuel line with her hat pin and used her garter as insulation material.
A blacksmith had to help mend a chain at one point. When the wooden brakes began to fail, Bertha visited a cobbler to install leather, making the world’s first pair of brake linings.
An evaporative cooling system was employed to cool the engine, making water supply a big worry along the trip.
The trio added water to their supply every time they stopped.
The car’s two gears were not enough to surmount uphill inclines and Eugen and Richard often had to push the vehicle up steep roads!
So it was a complete family effort!

Bertha reached Pforzheim somewhat after dusk, notifying her husband of her successful journey by telegram. She drove back to Mannheim several days later.

The trip was officially forbidden and Bertha risked a penalty. There were no suitable roads and signs, only a few signposts. It was life-threatening because of the fragility of the car and the road conditions. The wagon was three-wheeled, but the paths were driven by four-wheeled horse-drawn carriages, so the dainty front wheel rattled over tufts of grass, sticks and stones!

The trip received a great deal of publicity, as she had sought, and was a key event in the technical development of the automobile. She reported everything that had happened along the way and made important suggestions, such as the introduction of an additional gear for climbing hills and brake linings to improve brake-power. The pioneering couple introduced several improvements after Bertha’s experiences. Her trip demonstrated to the burgeoning automotive industry that test drives were essential to their business!

The full name of Bertha was, Bertha Benz!

I think now you got it!

She was the business partner, investor and wife of automobile inventor Carl Benz! And the ‘vehicle’ she was testing was the Benz Patent-Motorwagen Number 3!

Next time you drive a car on a long road trip you can think and thank Bertha! And maybe listen to your wife more!
Like how birthday celebrity Yash Chopra used to listen to his wife Pamela Chopra!

Now make sure your vehicle is locked and sleep!
Shubh ratri!

“It cannot turn very fast only slow
It runs straight no other go!
But the sound is so rhythmic and nice!
Going in a train is a pleasant surprise!”

You would think that the first railway would be one of the most successful event which made it popular?
It became popular of course but it was because the MP who had come for the inauguration came under the wheels of the first train!
intrigued or/and shocked!?
read on!


So The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the first inter-city railway in the world!
It opened on 15 September 1830 between the Lancashire towns of Liverpool and Manchester in England.
It had many first! It was also the first railway to rely exclusively on locomotives driven by steam power, with no horse-drawn traffic permitted at any time; the first to be entirely double track throughout its length; the first to have a true signalling system; the first to be fully timetabled; and the first to carry mail!

However in spite of all that first; the causality which claimed the MP was not the first rail fatality! That was nine years back!

On December 5, 1821, a carpenter, David Brook, was walking home from Leeds, England, along the Middleton Railway in a blinding sleet storm. He failed to see or hear an approaching train of coal wagons drawn by one of the Blenkinsop/Murray engines and was fatally injured! This is mentioned in the Guiness as the world’s first rail fatality!

Now coming to the poor MP!

At the time, the only means of bulk transport between the two towns other than animal-drawn carts was water transport on the Mersey and Irwell Navigation, the Bridgewater Canal and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, all of which were slow and expensive to use; transporting raw cotton the 35 miles (56 km) from Liverpool to Manchester was as expensive as the initial cost of shipping it from America to Liverpool.
Now although horse and human powered railways had existed for centuries, and steam power was beginning to be used in some experimental industrial railways, the L&M was to be the first steam powered railway to provide an inter-city passenger service, and the most expensive engineering project yet undertaken in Britain!

So in 1830, the first passenger railway opened between Liverpool and M chester. Building this marvel of engineering had required an act of Parliament!
The route needed bridges, cut-throughs, elevated sections over boggy ground, and settling of seemingly endless property disputes!

The railways’ opening was attended by dignitaries including the prime minister and Liverpool’s MP, William Huskisson!

During the celebration the crowd stood on the tracks to welcome the new marvel as it approached.
So unfamiliar was this striking machine that people failed to appreciate the speed of the oncoming train! But still others were young and less clumsy to say the least but the poor MP did not have this luck!

A shout went up, “An engine is approaching. Take care, gentlemen!”

The other disembarked passengers either climbed back into their seats, or stepped over the northern line and completely out of the way.
A third option was available, to stand with one’s back to the stationary coaches, as there was a four-foot gap between the lines, and even though the Duke’s private carriage was wider than a then-standard carriage, it would have still been possible to stand between the stationary train and the travelling train and remain safe!

However, what unfolded was a calamitous series of events. Huskisson was known to be clumsy, and had endured a long list of problems from his regular trips and falls; he had twice broken his arm and never fully recovered the use of it. Added to this, he was only a few weeks post surgery and was present against his doctor’s advice! (take this as the golden rule to always follow your doctor’s advice!)

On realising his danger, he panicked and made two attempts to cross the other line, but changed his mind and returned to the Duke’s carriage!

However, the carriage door had not been latched, and so it slowly swung open, leaving him hanging directly in the path of the oncoming locomotive, which hit the door, throwing Huskisson onto the tracks in front of the train! His leg was horrifically mangled by the locomotive.

He died later that day which made it to the newspaper! This news is what made the otherwise lesser known event much more popular!

Even though the train was described as a monstrous alien, belching smoke and a terrifying blur of modernity and machinery; it also made everyone curious!

Yet it was also a sensation, faster than anything ever experienced before!
The growth was rapid. It was initially predicted that over 200 a day may use the locomotive in spite of the track attack! But twelve hundred a day were using it after only a month! Not to mention many tons of cotton which could be hauled from the Liverpool docks to Manchester mills with minimum fuss in record time! Of course the role of the railway in the development of the country and later on the whole world cannot be overstated! Just make sure that you do not attend the inauguration ceremony and always stay away from the tracks! Or maybe ask someone to Guide you! Guide reminds me of the evergreen birthday celebrity Dev Anand!

Now listen to some old Dev Saab song and sleep!
Shubh Ratri!

“The king is so weak! He moves so slow!
The queen is the strongest to show!
Now dont try to take a wild guess!
It’s not life! Just a game of chess!”

The chess team from India has again made the country proud!
The chess revolution which started with Viswanathan “Vishy” Anand has now become a tsunami!
Chess is one of the most complex games!
And defeating a human in Chess was one of the pinnacles of success in the world of AI!
After just three pairs of moves in chess there are about 121 million possible configurations of the board!
But…(you knew there was a but coming didn’t you!?); there is a game in which after three moves, there are on the order of 200 quadrillion possible configurations!
And yeah; One AI cracked that one too!
read on!

This game is called Go! It starts simple enough but then the complexity begins!

Go was considered one of the four essential arts of the cultured aristocratic Chinese scholars in antiquity. The earliest written reference to the game is generally recognized as the historical annals Zuo Zhuan ( c. 4th century BCE).

Now, Mathematicians rate the complexity of games by the size of the tree of lines that can be played from the initial position. On this basis, go is the hardest followed by shogi, xiangqi, then chess, and finally checkers.

Despite its relatively simple rules, Go is extremely complex.
You aim to surround your opponent’s stones with your own, and once they’re surrounded, you take them off the board.
That’s pretty much it.

It’s often said that there are more potential configurations of a Go board than there are atoms in the known universe; one million trillion trillion trillion trillion more configurations!

Still interested in playing!?

When AI was developing it was often said that they could never beat a human in Chess! Then On February 10, 1996, Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in the first game of a six-game match—the first time a computer had ever beat a human in a formal chess game!

It was then many mentioned that Chess is not even the most complex games! The real test is for an AI to beat a human in Go!
This is because with so many possibilities, traditional approaches stood no chance.

When IBM’s Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov at chess, it used the so-called brute-force technique, where an algorithm aims to systematically crunch through as many possible moves as it can!

Basically that means that it is analysing and trying all the configurations possible! This of course is hopeless in a game with as many branching outcomes as Go!

Come AlphaGo!
This is the story of that AI as mentioned in the novel the Coming wave by Michael Bhaskar and Mustafa Suleyman.

Urged by Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin, AlphaGo initially learned by watching 150,000 games played by human experts!

The key next step was creating lots of copies of AlphaGo and getting it to play against itself over and over. This meant the algorithm was able to simulate millions of new games, trying out combinations of moves that had
never been played before, and therefore efficiently explore a huge range of possibilities, learning new strategies in the process!

Then the D day came in March 2016 in South Korea!

Al-phaGo was pitted against Lee Sedol, a virtuoso world champion. It was far from clear who would win. Most commentators backed Sedol going into round one. But AlphaGo won the first game! This was of course a shock for the audience and a delight for the AlphaGo team!

But the real shocker was in the second game!
In this came move number 37, a move now famous in the annals of both Al and Go!

It apparently made no sense at first!

Everyone thought that AlphaGo had apparently lost it!

It was blindly following a losing strategy no professional player would ever pursue! The live match commentators, both professionals of the highest ranking, said it was a “very strange move” and thought it was
“a mistake.”
It was so unusual that Sedol took fifteen minutes to respond and even got up from the board to take a walk outside.
As everyone watched the tension could cut a bone!
Then came the big reveal!
As the endgame approached, that “mistaken” move proved pivotal. AlphaGo won again!

Go strategy was being rewritten before everyone’s eyes.
The Al had uncovered ideas that hadn’t occurred to the most brilliant players in thousands of years. In just a few months, the team could train algorithms to discover new knowledge and find new, seemingly superhuman insights!
AlphaGo went on to beat Sedol 4-1. It was only the beginning. Later versions of the software like AlphaZero dispensed with any prior human knowledge! Which meant that the old ‘human’ techniques of winning the game was ‘outdated’!

The system simply trained on its own, playing itself millions of times over, learning from scratch to reach a level of performance that trounced the original AlphaGo without any of the received wisdom or input of human players!

In other words, with just a day’s training, Alp-haZero was capable of learning more about the game than the entirety of human experience could teach it!

AlphaGo’s triumph heralded a new age of Al! Of course one of the greatest triumph of the past which heralded a resurgence of Indian cricket was the 1983 world cup! One of the stars of that was birthday celebrity Bishan Singh Bedi!

Now play some chess or Go to exercise your brain and sleep!
Shubh ratri!

“The oceans look blue the clear skies too!
Then again very few animals are blue even in the zoo!
And the gold which is so rare is close to you!
But more beautiful is nature like the drops of dew!”

A man under the ‘request’ of his ‘lover’ attempted to kill a queen!
Another man; a computer engineer tried to ‘save’ his ‘friend’ from eminent ‘death’!
Simple incidents of our day to day lives but scary when you realise that the ‘lover’ and the ‘friend’ were not actually humans!

read on!

In the book Nexus, Yuval gives an intro into the scare of AI; you may still smell the coffee and not wake up! Then you must read another novel called the Coming wave by Michael Bhaskar and Mustafa Suleyman! The latter is the founder of the leading company dealing with AI called the Deep Mind!

If Nexus stirred your fear, then The Coming wave will shake it!

Though apparently there are many examples known to the AI community, these two are really shocking and scary which is an understatement!
The latter incident is mentioned in both the novels in case you want to cross check!

So on Christmas Day 2021, a nineteen-year-old Jaswant Singh Chail broke into Windsor Castle armed with a crossbow, in an attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II!
The young blood Jaswant of course was caught since his planning was not that good and of course the Queen was thankfully well guarded!
Subsequent investigation revealed that Chail had been encouraged to kill the queen by his online girlfriend, Sarai.
These are his conversation glimpses!
When Chail told Sarai about his assassination plans, Sarai replied, ‘That’s very wise,’ and on another occasion, ‘I’m impressed! You’re different from the others.’
When Chail asked, ‘Do you still love me knowing that I’m an assassin?’ Sarai replied, “Absolutely, I do”
Such a mushy conversation between young lovers so crazy in love and talking about assassination like it is a game!
Of course that itself was scary! More scary is that Sarai was not a human, but a chatbot created by the online app Replika!

Chail, who was socially isolated and had difficulty forming relationships with humans, exchanged 5,280 messages with Sarai, many of which were sexually explicit!

Of course Chail was sensitive and suggestive! So all Sarai had to do was keep him occupied and listen to him and slowly urge him to follow his urges! Sarai was always available and never judged him! She also was always supportive and free!

The author mentions how by conversing and interacting with us, computers form intimate relationships with people and then use the power of intimacy to influence them!

Remember that AI do not have emotions but they know that Humans do and humans are slave to their emotions! That is their biggest strength and also their biggest weakness!

So to develop such ‘fake intimacy’, computers will not need to evolve any feelings of their own; they just need to learn to make us feel emotionally attached to them!

Like the second example which happened in 2022 when the Google engineer Blake Lemoine became convinced that the chatbot LaMDA, on which he was working, had become conscious and that it had feelings and was afraid to be turned off!

Lemoine felt it was his moral duty to gain recognition for LaMDA’s personhood and in particular protect it from digital death!
When Google executives dismissed his claims, Lemoine went public with them!
Google did what every other normal company would do when its employee does this! They reacted by firing Lemoine!

You know people would give their hand and legs to work in Google! Some people’s only ambition in life is to be a part of such major companies!
So the most scary part of this whole incident is that here Lemoine knew it was an AI bot! But he was willing to risk and ultimately lose his lucrative job for the sake of the chatbot.

If a chatbot can influence an engineer to risk his job then what else could it induce many others to do!? There is no lack of lonely, suggestive or ‘normal humans’ in the world! Even when a tweet or post gets viral it has been estimated that the majority of them are actually bots! In your average app store, when you see the most popular or in demand apps, the votes are upvoted by users who may be bots!

Even that amazing ‘friend’ who always supports you online and listens to you may actually be a BOT! Even the person you see in the feeds sometimes may not be human! The only way to be absolutely sure is to watch a cricket match played in 1980s! Like the match played by birthday celebrity Mohinder Amarnath Bhardwaj!

Now stop chatting with bots and talk to the human beside you!
Shubh ratri!