Note
This blog turns five today. It's nice to think I've a habit when few others have survived.
Thank you for reading my writing. :)
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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 do research-level mathematics. Of course, experts verify an experiment in condensed matter physics and
Lesson learnt? None.
A particular line from the open statement mathematicians wrote against the design of the latest Caltech Mathathon, due to happen in late October, has stuck with me: Mathematicians do not only prove theorems: they also take measures to ensure that the future of a field remains healthy after the extraction
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 been reduced to “India shouldn’t make chips because it can smuggle them in instead”. Excerpt:
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 resistance and challenged, if AI writing gets the green signal? With a good