Over the last two days, the world of AI has been struck by two maelstroms. Both concern ethics, both involve two of the world’s leading AI companies, and both force us to ask whether the institutions directing the development of artificial intelligence are equal to the responsibility they have assumed. Yet they illuminate two quite different dimensions of the problem of Ethics in AI. The first arose from a dispute involving New York University mathematician Tristan Buckmaster, his collaborator Levent Alpöge and OpenAI. Buckmaster and Alpöge had spent about a year working on difficult problems related to the Navier–Stokes equations, using models from OpenAI and Anthropic as research tools. OpenAI subsequently mounted its own large-scale agentic effort after hearing that progress had been made on a Millennium Prize problem. It then announced a result within days, triggering questions about research confidentiality, the use of customer interactions in model training, scientific attributi...

Today is 1st May, also traditionally celebrated as Labor Day and has long been a symbol of workers' rights and the achievements of the labor movement. However, in today's rapidly evolving work landscape, characterized by a shift towards knowledge-based professions and remote work culture, I find it to be an anachronistic, a relic of an industrial past which we have left behind at least 30 years ago. The traditional concept of "labor" as associated with manual work on assembly lines is increasingly outdated in today's economy. A significant portion of the workforce now comprises knowledge workers, whose value lies not in the hours they put in, but in the expertise and unique skills they bring to their roles. Unlike interchangeable factory workers, professionals are irreplaceable assets, requiring specialized recruitment strategies to attract and retain top talent [1]. In fact, the term "knowledge worker " may no longer accurately capture the essence of t...

Image Credits by Flickr user  urbaneapts I recently went to the showroom of ' Sleek ' - a modular kitchen furnishing company. I and my wife were discussing the various options for fitments to be bought when we came to the point of discussing the Chimney. Both me and my wife were sold out on buying a Chimney, but the salesperson asked us if we were non-vegetarian and whether our apartment had a window in front of the stove - the answer to the former being no and the latter being yes. To my surprise, the salesperson suggested we do not buy the Chimney because we will have little use for it. The salesperson knew she was reducing the ticket size of her sale by almost 10% and this was not a discount to make the sale, the discount was to come after this. The experience reminded me of how we work in consulting - there are times when we tell our clients that they are not ready for a particular initiative or a new software implementation, even though these initiatives would fetch...