Unlike the steam engine, electricity, or the internet, even the experts find it challenging to see Artificial Intelligence for what it truly is. This is the greatest test we face ahead.

Chatbots based on Large Language Models are only one specific use case of AI. We have other systems that play advanced games or aid the invention of life-saving drugs. These are the silent back benchers. The flashy chatbots are stealing the show simply because they talk. To be fair, these chatbots are jacks of many trades. Their versatility makes them fit for a wide range of tasks, from an individual creating recipes to a company building its software. Consequently, these chatbots have become the face of AI for all of us.

Interfacing with chatbots through natural language triggers the phenomenon of anthropomorphism. Let us call it human-masking. This is our reflexive tendency to ascribe human qualities, like intent or emotion, to mere things.

True, the human-mask is naturally compelling when an AI gives personal advice on negotiating with a boss. It feels like talking to a friendly former colleague. But this mask also leads people to delegate their critical life decisions to chatbots. This was tragically seen in the case of Ben Riley’s father, who lost his life after he relied on AI counsel for his cancer. Unfortunately, the number of these tragic incidents continues to rise.

While the human-mask is already deceptive enough for society, expert perspectives only add to the grand confusion. Public discourse currently circles around two dominant camps.

There are experts who drape a human-mask over these machines with excitement. We can call them the Enthusiasts.

Then there are those who fix a human-mask onto chatbots with an unhealthy anxiety. These are the Skeptics.

The Enthusiasts camp wants to promote its powerful benefits and claim revolutionary potential. The catch is that these experts are the tech leaders of AI chatbot companies themselves. The insiders. The people with the biggest stakes in the continued success of AI chatbots in their current form.

LLM-based chatbots have reached a state that could positively impact all the industries. That is an amazing achievement which deserves due recognition and investment. However, they are asking for trillions of dollars more from the market. From society. Never before has so much money been sought from investors in a single year, reports The Economist. This is a massive bet on a specific version of the future, that needs massive promotion. The human-mask comes in handy here.

While Artificial Intelligence is immensely powerful in its own way, this camp claims that chatbots will eventually replace all human professionals, especially the white-collar workforce. However hyperbolic their perspective may be, it cannot be dismissed as mere noise. They are, after all, the innovators, and they deserve a seat at the table. But in a sense, these corporate giants already own a big part of the table itself.

Then there is the second camp of Skeptics. They recognize the utility of AI in some areas but remain unsure of its ultimate benefit to humanity. Some even venture into the realm of doomsday predictions. This group includes thought leaders like Yuval Noah Harari, who ponder deep societal questions. It even includes Professor Geoffrey Hinton, widely considered one of the godfathers of the field. These experts fix a human-mask onto the technology with a sense of existential dread.

It is valuable to think outside the box. It is even more valuable when done by people who are actually out of the box.

Because these thought leaders exist beyond the tech industry, their perspective is not mere noise. It is a genuine warning. Yet their voice unfortunately strengthens the human-mask even more.

The Enthusiasts and the Skeptics both demand a hearing. That is only fair. But because these are rival perspectives regarding AI potential, their clash gives a false signal of a balanced fight. This is turning the volume down on a third and vital perspective.

This third camp consists of experts who strip away the human-mask to reveal the probabilistic language generation machine underneath. We can call them the Realists.

They highlight the immense utility of AI without the need for a mask. They ask us to notice the genuine gold inside the box while ignoring the distracting glitter of the conversational facade.

Professor Michael Wooldridge of Oxford is a leading voice in this camp. As the Ashall Professor of Foundations of AI, his speeches and interviews provide a clear articulation of this view. He is not merely an academic leader. A Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, he has a long history of collaborating with the very firms driving the industry.

This camp also includes Professor Yann LeCun, who stands as a foundational counterpart to the more anxious Professor Hinton. Another godfather of the field, LeCun has led hands-on research teams for decades. He was the key figure behind the neural networks that revolutionized banking in the 1990s. As the former chief scientist of AI research at Meta, he famously unmasked the technology with a blunt comparison. He noted that a house cat has more common sense and world-understanding than the biggest large language model.

This functional view is also echoed by a stalwart of the industry establishment, Eric Schmidt. When interviewers pressed the former Google CEO on what to do if AI becomes a Terminator coming for human lives, he told them to just switch it off.

All these experts see AI as a suite of super-powered machines. No human-mask is required. They view the technology as a tool to be utilized appropriately rather than a creature to be cheered or feared.

The professors and tech leaders holding this view are giants in their own right. They certainly have their space in the public discourse, but not enough. This is partly due to the market aspirations of industry titans, partly because of the existential concerns of thought leaders, and finally because human-masking is a naturally attractive story for all of us.

The mask can be dangerous for individual users. It can be equally dangerous on a broader scale when it deceives policymakers. Especially at a juncture where jobs and livelihoods may be affected, the human-mask serves as a great distraction.

The polarized camps argue whether AI will eventually replace all jobs, a premise I have argued against previously. But to have a heavy impact on society, AI does not have to replace every human job. Any amount of job loss affects real lives. When that loss is broader and faster than before, the consequences are even worse.

It is vital that policymakers create appropriate safety nets for the affected parts of society. But to make the right policies, we must view the technology for what it actually is.

We must turn up the volume for the third camp of experts who strip away the human-mask from AI chatbots. After all, the future is defined by the prevailing perspectives.

We must remember that the same neural network technology sits at the heart of AI chatbots and the systems that predict protein structures for life-saving medicines. The core engine is the same. Only the outer layer and the interface change.

True, the experts are still figuring out the intricacies of how AI generates a specific output. This mystery exists partly because of the sheer scaling possibilities of the digital world.

But at a high level it is reasonable to look at it like this.

When we feed astronomical amounts of data about protein structures into the neural network black box and poke it, the golden machine yields possible protein structures. Only scientists can interpret that output.

When we feed planets of human-written text into the same box and poke it, the golden machine yields possible text outputs. Any human can understand that output.

This familiarity is what makes us readily put a human-mask on the AI chatbot but not on the AI that creates life-saving drugs. We end up deceiving ourselves about what AI really is. Isn’t that the real tragedy?

— sAb

(RECORD 005)

Let us go back hundreds of thousands of years. Imagine you are a child in a tribe of our earliest ancestors who dwell in a dense green forest, where the birds sing as long as the sun is high.

You are focused on the greenish glassy skin of Creeky, the tiny frog in your palm.

A wild boar is charging straight towards you from a distance.

You are unaware and still scratching Creeky’s head with your finger as he closes his eyes slowly.

Five hundred steps away. A moving thunder. The boar has locked you in its sights. Aligned in a straight line behind you.

Creeky lies upside down in your palm with eyes still closed. He curls back to his position as he feels a tremor in the air. His eyes grow wide and shaky. He knows the family tale of the grandfather who relaxed in the hot spring a little too long. But he decides to stay in your warm hand for a few heartbeats more.

As you are giggling, you hear heavy thuds through a low, rhythmic huffing and turn back.

You see only a ball of dried leaves with a lowered head and your mind is still trying to catch up with your eyes.

A hundred steps away now. At the boar’s speed and size, the tiny you and Creeky will be airborne in a heartbeat.

One of the aunts sees the beast approaching the child. She snatches a stone and throws it casually. The boar dies.

Waves of loud voices carry the surprise. The boar was supposed to run away. Instead, it died. The entire tribe gathers around to see.

The stone the aunt snatched from the earth has a peculiar shape. It is long and thin with an edge like the tip of a leaf. It pierced deep into the boar’s dense skin.

People make way for the head of the tribe to get to the scene. The echoes of the shock still haven’t settled. She stares for a few moments. Then she removes the sharp stone from the boar’s body, wet in thick-red. She places the stone close to her heart, lets out a piercing cry of wonder, and begins to ululate.

Everyone lifts their head towards the sky and the birds from nearby trees join in the chorus. A life-changing event has occurred.

The God Stone is found.

It is not a tool to be used lightly. It is placed at the heart of the dwelling and taken out only when the hunger is deep. Then, they find another God Stone. And another.

The tribe starts a new ritual every season to hunt for every God Stone that the gods had placed for them. Through grueling searches in distant lands and across the riverbeds they gather a small treasury. It is an arsenal that reshapes their entire existence. God Stones provide food, save lives and lift the spirit of the whole tribe.

Our tribe—yes, I was playing on your right side—has continued this ritual for many many seasons, taking us in to the phase of abundance.

The Tale of Buggy

The God Stone treasury has grown huge.

It is the sunny season. The teenagers are being trained for hunting in the open land near the twin mountains. A group of them is lined up on one end facing a row of big reddish fruits placed a hundred steps away. Each one holds a God Stone. Their eyes are locked on the target.

The instructor walks slowly with their hands folded behind their back, inspecting the position of each trainee’s legs and the grip on their God Stone. Feet are trembling. Bodies are sweating. Still, their eyes are frozen, like stones.

The instructor moves to the side, clearing the line of sight and raises their chest. A deep breath. A moment of silence. Then a heavy shout. The instructor gives the command to throw.

A few heartbeats later, the instructor starts crying. They collapse screaming, with blood dripping from a toe. Total chaos ensues. Line breaks. All teens rush toward the instructor. But one is running the other way into the trees.

And that is Buggy. The lazy bugger.

No. He is not malicious. He genuinely aimed for the target fruit a hundred steps away. Somehow the stone hits the instructor’s foot five steps away, on the side.

The training period has no final test or mark of completion. It is a phase all teens must endure. Then they are pushed into the wild alone to hunt for two sunrises. Whoever returns on the third sunrise is ready to join the hunting team, ready for more life.

Nature is the arbiter. It clears out the unskilled.

The legend among the children is that God takes the missing ones to give them special training.

The words “survival of the fittest” triggers the specific visual of fittest offspring in our minds. The three out of ten. Buggy belongs to the other seven. He is tall and looks more majestic than the other kids. That is always frowned upon. It makes Buggy the target of bullies. The prevailing wisdom is that to be an agile hunter you should be short, swift, and compact. Buggy’s clumsy stumbles on the training ground seem to prove the tribe right.

After the training phase, before sending teens into the wild alone, there is a celebratory ritual for seven days. During this time the teens are treated to all their favorite foods and games. Buggy gets a little rounder within a few days and has a lot of fun. The entire tribe is full of smiles and joy.

Buggy’s mother wears a blank face throughout. Every night and morning she kisses Buggy and holds him tight for a long time.

She still sees shadows of her loving brother.

He entered the wild for his trial when she was young herself. The whole tribe served him his favorite food at the festival. He was the only one who got that privilege. Then he left. Her brother did not return on the third sunrise.

She did not cry. Not at all. She was carried away by the momentum of life.

Many seasons later, she tripped over the shiny blue stone her brother had brought for her back from his long walk. She sat on the wet clay, held the stone tight and cried until her eyes went dry.

The festival comes to an end.

It is time for the teens to start their life test. Every parent helps their young one prepare the small bundle they are allowed to carry along with their God Stone.

The sky grows darker. Each teen is blindfolded with thick leaves. The moment the sun goes down they must leave.

Buggy can’t see anything. His hands are trembling. Buggy’s father sees his mother hugging him. He wraps his arms around them both.

The sun goes down.

Slowly the teens prepare to move with the natural delay. Each one is paired with their guide who will drop them in their spot and return. But then there is more delay.

The head of the tribe is still closing her talk with the council. Finally she breaks away. She strides toward Buggy’s parents to whisper something.

Floods of tears break open from the mother’s eyes. She is smiling and shaking her head at the same time forgetting even to wipe her tears.

The blindfold of Buggy is loosened and he himself helps pull it away.

Buggy is exempted from the wild forest test. The tribe needs him for a different task.

The tribe council has been discussing this for almost three sunny seasons.

There is a horde of giant human-like apes stealing God Stones. They are three times taller, but are not clever. They come in massive packs with a roar of noise. They risk lives to break into the treasury. Once inside they take a single stone and leave. And come back another time.

The council decided. They need someone to tackle the giants.

Buggy is expected to wake up in the mornings and walk to the God Stone treasury. He must position himself forty steps away from the treasury gate. And sleep.

Yes.

The apes are scared of humans. While they shred scare-ape decoys made of leaves they do not dare come near a real human. Not even a sleeping one.

Buggy’s life changes overnight. People start wishing him a good sun as he walks his path to the treasury every morning.

His mother tells visiting aunts that her son works as the Commander of the Tribe’s Treasury Watch Guards. Buggy takes his job seriously. He sleeps throughout the day with dedication.

But after a few days the routine begins to weigh on him. He sits still. He hear the apes at times, but never sees. He stands staring at the sky and remains absorbed for a long movement of the sun. This is something he has loved since childhood.

A rhythm of marching footsteps approaches him.

It is the hunting team of his tribe marching toward the riverbeds to find more God Stones. They pass by Buggy who is standing like a frozen penguin. Some people laugh joking that the tall bugger has not changed. Some of Buggy’s friends wave. He does not respond.

He remains in the same position as his shadow moves a good distance. Then he suddenly starts running, toward the mountain top.

He runs to a familiar ridge and searches. He picks up a few stones and discards them. Then he finds one with the color of a dark cloud. There is nothing special about its shape.

He starts grinding it against a rough patch of the mountain. Again and again he rotates it in different directions. Slowly the stone starts getting sharper.

The hunting team returns empty-handed for the fourth day in a row. Their spirits are low. The God Stone treasury has been stagnant for two seasons.

As they approach the treasury gate, their world tilts forever.

Buggy is sleeping like a baby, clutching three identical God Stones to his chest. Each one is more symmetrical, more sharp, and more powerful than any God Stone the tribe had ever seen.

— sAb

(RECORD 004)

Thanks to my sister Manickathai Muthiah for her indispensable notes on my draft.

For goodness’ sake, how can a machine learn? It is made of silicon wafers and just metal.

True, we don’t fully know how human beings, creatures made of carbon, learn. At least we are... well, “living beings“.

What is a living being?

Well, something that has a motivation to live.

Hmmm?!

I mean something that wants to move forward as much as possible and something capable of nurturing and passing on its essence, values, or care to the next generation, whether that is through blood, adoption, or mere inspiration.

Wow. That is a good definition. Stop.

What the heck does that have to do with the original question, “how” does a human learn?

Well, I think it has someth... Okay. Let’s get out of this rabbit hole.

Keep humans aside. For now, we are special. At least for now, while the scientists are still on it. But how on earth do machines, which are just sophisticated toys made by humans, actually “learn”?

That is a fundamental question. Now that AI, in the form of chatbots and agents, is in all our pockets and desks, we have to wonder. What does it mean for professionals? What does it mean for a writer or an artist? How can we embrace AI, and should we? In what parts of our lives does it truly belong? There are many, many questions like this.

I addressed a few of these briefly in my previous essay, “War of Progress, AI vs Our Jobs.” According to the analytics, that essay has 1,300 views so far, whatever a “view” actually means. This is motivating for someone who always wanted to write and finally started. Writing is still my tiny weekend project among my regular weekend activities. Fortunately, I write about things I am genuinely curious about, which means some of my leisure time or life experiences often overlap with research time. Motivated by this view count, I am starting a short series of essays on AI to explore these questions. The main goal is to slow down, and zoom in on AI with no jargon.

Coming to the point. Who am I to write on AI?

My crush hasn’t said a single word to me in three months. Not one. To be fair, that has been true since the very first time I saw her, around three months ago.

That kind of thing used to keep me up at night back in my school days. I also wondered if God exists.

In between those two, I worried about a lot of other things. Failed exams. Being a mediocre chess player or a mediocre badminton player. I was someone who loved probability but still couldn’t predict my failure in the upcoming math tests. I loved computer science and actually passed those tests. I even tried to prove to people that I could dance. I performed on a few live stages, and no one ran away.

I am a proud mediocre in many things. And the beauty of putting up with something to learn it, at least to a mediocre level, is that it stays with you almost forever.

Thanks to my sister’s bookshelf, back when she was pursuing a graduate degree in Computer Science, I slept with a book about “Artificial Intelligence” for a few days. It did not help. It seems that is not the way for a high school student to grasp advanced concepts.

I did not understand most of it. But it created a tiny compartment inside my brain dedicated to “Artificial Intelligence” from that moment on. Whenever I heard that keyword, something blinked inside my mind to focus.

That blinking continued through lunch discussions during my graduate course in Information Technology, where AI was a tiny part of the curriculum. The blinks followed me to the coffee tables of my software job. But those blinks became a beeping alarm around 2019. I suddenly registered for a remote certification course from Stanford University on the foundations of data science, all while working my full-time software career.

The alarm slowly settled back into a blink. But in 2026, this whole alarm setup exploded and became non-functional. Thanks to AI coding agents.

The certification I earned from Stanford was actually very basic. But I think the point of any course in school or college is about much more than the content itself. It is about keeping you in the “zone” of learning a specific topic by surrounding you with discussions, books, and related ideas. The key point is that it makes a lasting impact. Your mind forever retains a bit of that zone. I entered that zone of Artificial Intelligence through a three-month course from one of the world’s leading universities for Computer Science.

Because of that, for almost six years now, this AI compartment in my brain has burned bright. I am listening to and reading the top experts in the field while lying down and relaxing at the altar where I may eventually be sacrificed.

I processed AI with the analytical brain of a software engineer, and as a writer, I know how to communicate it to you. [Author pats their own shoulder. A little too much.]

I want to tell you that I stand on the shoulders of experts. In fact… just one more fact. A few years ago, I thought about starting a social media channel with video content and I joined a three-month online course, from a university in the US, on “Journalism”.

I did not actually complete it, though I finished 80%. Believe me. The course was offered in a way that was free until that point, but you had to pay to write the exam and get the certificate. I did not.

A course on journalism teaches you how to stand on the shoulders of actual experts, and dance.

I assure you I will give my level best in guiding you through this topic. I aim for 100% accuracy, though in reality, I may only touch 95% or even 75%. Feel free to take parts of it or throw parts of it away as you see fit.

So how AI works?

No one in the world understands it.

No, no, wait. This is not the punch line of a stupid joke that took fifteen minutes to build up. The one where people throw eggs and run after me.

What I mean is that no one including the experts, understands exactly how AI gives a specific output for the specific input we provide. But our scientists and engineers have a very good understanding of what goes into building these machines. After all, they did it.

The way AI is built is fundamentally different from almost all the engineering we have done since our great-grandparents built stone axes, some of which we can see today in the Chennai Museum.

Interestingly this is also touching each of our lives. It is important for all of us to take a thin layer of this AI cake from the scientific bakery and put it into our common sense lunch box. That is important for our personal lives, professional lives and even a democratic society itself.

So, we will explore AI together, with me as your expert curator.

As I said, writing is my tiny weekend project apart from the other mediocre pursuits, like singing, and people are still not running away. I will reach out once the first essay in this series is ready. Or the other long essay about “Crisis of truth”. Until then, have a great time! Cheers!

— sAb

(RECORD 003)

I am not a poet. But I got a street song.

How does it feel to know nothing?
The pitch darkness when you do not know what is light.
Exciting?
Or scary?

Was it the loss of excitement? 
Why did you cry? Tell me!
Why did you cry?
Well. Why did I?

Each experienced
None remembers

Did you catch that dancing droplet?
The yellow one trying to fly
The glowing one towards the sky
Did it hurt? 

Remember it now
Remember it ever 

Look at the spark
Look at the candle
Look at the glowing woods
Remember the fire

Remember it now
Remember it ever

Wound is harsh
Scar is tasty 
Older is delicious
Don't hate fire

Remember it now
Remember it ever 

Isn't it cold?
For the baby girl?
Lick the scars
Pick the fire

Remember it now
Remember it ever

Skin of scars
Journey of fun 
Still
Was it the loss of excitement? Why did we cry?

Let’s move on.

I originally wrote a small paragraph like this “How does it feel to know nothing? Exciting? Or scary? Each experienced it. None remembers it.”

That was for my future essay. But after writing, I saw some seeds for a poem. I am not a poet. Still I decided to water it a little.

My next essay was triggered by a casual, unexpected encounter on a bus ride in Chennai, a long long time ago. At that time it made me ask a question that has lingered in some corner of my mind ever since, showing up at times. Showing up more in recent years. After 15 years now, I thought I should attempt to answer it.

Now, I have the license to dive into lake of thoughts, as deep as I can, to bring back something from the bottom and show to people with beaming breath, hoping they use it or gracefully smile at. I am a writer.

Not by profession but by life. A part of life.

My future essay is about the “Crisis of Truth” in our society today. Still not sure if the above “street song” will end up in it, or in this form. It depends on how it fits together with other parts, which are still in progress and if they together convey the overarching idea of the essay.

But just thought of sharing this, off the record.

Not sure when the essay will be ready. We will see.

Have a great week end and the week ahead!

-sAb

(OFF THE RECORD)

On a random day in early 2026, I stand in a queue of software professionals, reading a headline. The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund recently warned in Davos that artificial intelligence is unleashing a tsunami across global labor markets. And she said that will affect forty percent of jobs worldwide. My sister is standing next to me in this same line, surrounded by a dreamy, dark atmosphere. The long queue leads to the altar of automation, where professionals are sacrificed! We software engineers are asked to go to the front, and for some reason, radiologists are walking in the opposite direction with a muted smile. How did my sister and I end up here?

While my elder sister studied computer science, I raided her bookshelf frequently, looking for books about coding or design. Eventually, a heavy book, thick as a pillow, anchored my curiosity and tagged with me on the bed. I slept with my head against the pages for many nights, hoping for an osmosis that never came. It was a dense roadmap for mimicking the human mind, and that was my first encounter with artificial intelligence. Eventually, I followed my sister into the software field, that pushed us out of our home city, Chennai, to opposite sides of the globe. In professions helping to maintain the hidden architecture of telecom giants and state infrastructures, with software.

My formal entry into AI began in 2019, when I enrolled in a remote Stanford certification in Data Science. While I was snailing through the basics in the quiet dawns of my software job, a revolution was dismantling the status quo. It feels as though I left my desk to grab a coffee only to return and find Google announcing that AI already writes more than a quarter of its new software code as of 2026. By the time I finish the coffee, Claude Code’s agent teams are writing the code while we take a nap.

This isn’t just a shift in the software industry. The impact is projected to be on the entire job market by experts, while some tech leaders even predict a total wipeout of white-collar work. Stuart Russell, the man who co-authored that pillow book, and educated generations of AI scientists and software engineers, was recently named by TIME as one of the most influential figures in the field of AI. And at a recent event, he warned that we should “consider the possibility” that the bus of humanity is headed toward a cliff, the steering wheel is missing, and the driver is blindfolded.

For decades, we software engineers meticulously built the altar of automation, sacrificing every kind of professional out there. Now, in the very same queue, we are asked to go to the front. I want to look closer. I have more than just skin in this game—my head.

At the Gates: Know thy Challenger

Artificial intelligence is the holy grail of computer science, and the field of machine learning is a path to get us there. But how does a machine learn?

Learning Road

Consider a simple engineering problem: a small town must decide the width of a new access road. Space is tight, and they need a design that accommodates most vehicles. They could survey every vehicle in town, or they could try a more organic experiment. They could lay down a temporary road of soft, semi-solid clay, draw a single central guide line, and keep a signboard to redirect all cars into the clay, for a week. On the seventh day, the clay will have recorded the impressions left by the tires. If most residents drive small sedans, the deepest grooves will appear at that width.

The success of this clay road depends on the crowd. Ten cars leave only a faint trail, but a thousand cars carve a valuable dent. If the town’s fishers, with their wide salt-crusted trailers, aren’t told about the experiment and it’s off-season, the final road will be unfair. If a heavy bus wanders through on a rainy Tuesday, it spoils the clay. If a neighbor prefers to keep their tracks private, they must be allowed to bypass. No questions asked. Consent keeps the productive experiment from morphing into exploitation. Finally, we can say the clay “learned” the common widths of cars.

In essence, with a scientific approach,

we dented the clay with things available in huge amounts and variety, to make it useful for us.

That was the real world. Constrained by physics.

The digital world, powered by silicon chips, is not tethered to the weight of tires or the friction of earth. Here, we can recolor the body, swap the engine, or sprout a wing on the car in seconds. We can create millions of copies and send them to Munich, Chennai, and Cape Town simultaneously, all at near-zero cost, and all while holding a coffee in one hand.

But there is a catch. We can’t drive these cars in real world.

So what?

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Super Power Clay Ball

The possibilities of digital world were too great to ignore that we decided to translate our world into digits, like accounting sheets, movies, and architectural blueprints. So we could process it with surreal capabilities and translate them back into our world.

And?

Yes, we set out to create a digital equivalent of our learning-clay.

While we experimented with everything from rigid logical rules to elegant equations, one approach turned out to be the winner by a landslide. Imitating the brains of living beings, a digital architecture we call Neural Networks.

If they truly mimic the brain or not, remains a point of high-stakes debate. Yann LeCun says no. Geoffrey Hinton says yes. Both Turing award winners. As much as I could follow, I find myself aligning with LeCun here.

Whether they mimic the biology exactly or not, one point seems reasonably clear. Artificial intelligence need not be shackled to the performance limitations of its biological inspiration. After all, we built flying machines that surpassed the speed of sound, a feat that millions of years of organic evolution never quite managed.

The Neural Network was shaped over decades by pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio through significant phases. But this steady moving giant truck was supercharged into a high octane sprint by the silicon revolution of GPUs (Graphical Processors) in the 2000s.

If the clay road in our small town learned one feature, the width, a digital twin powered by GPUs now can learn millions. Layer in weight, speed, tire pressure, and temperature, possibly every touch point of that car’s existence. The result of that decades-long labor by the finest minds, with the necessary sprinkle of serendipity, is a super powerful digital clay ball capable of tracing millions of distinct features from every digital thing we run into it.

We got our cosmic clay ball, but now we need things in astronomic proportions to run into it. Digital things. I hear you, yes redirecting that million cars we sent to Chennai, into the clay will be a scene out of a Spielberg movie. But let me remind you of something. There is nothing interesting about identical things except the first one.

Our learning-clays thrive only on variety, the sedan, the hatchback, and the salt-crusted trailer of the fishers.

Data, Data, Data!

We can’t make bricks without clay. Wait. I wanted to say, we can’t make use of our cosmic learning-clay-ball without data. Vast amount of digital data. Diversity is crucial. Where can we get it?

Let us scroll up to early 1990s…

Steve Jobs who was fired from his own company, Apple, started his next company NEXT computers. Yes.

Steve Jobs and team at NEXT created an elegant black cube, a beautiful desk computer that combined innovative software, with incredibly powerful hardware, a true masterpiece of engineering and design. It failed in the market.

But, Sir Tim Berners Lee found that he could do things in the NEXT computer much faster with its intuitive interface and object oriented libraries, than other computers and he used it to create the World Wide Web. Paving the way for our Internet.

Later… baby internet, Mosaic Browser, Yahoo, Java, Microsoft Windows 95, Google, bigger internet, iMac, Dotcom boom, iPods, Google Maps, Facebook, much bigger internet… 2007.

Steve Jobs… Yes the same guy, not Jr… Yes he is back and heading Apple.

Steve Jobs, Jony Ive and team at Apple created an elegant pebble, a tiny pocket computer that combined innovative software, with incredibly powerful hardware, a true masterpiece of engineering and design. It succeeded in the market.

Like, in a big way.

iPhones, paving the way for its mimics, rained gasoline on the already spreading forest fire: The Internet.

It revolutionized the mobile interface, placing the grand world of the internet in our palms. It’s all from our pockets now. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Blogs, comments... billions of us. Data, Data, Data!

Planets of public data are for everyone to see, appreciate, and process with our human brains. But.

Is it okay process our public data, with powerful digital brains?

Well, that is how we built search engines like Yahoo and Google that acted as gateways, connecting the audience with the knowledge creators and artists.

Okay. No, not okay. Wait.

Is it fair to process our public data with super powerful digital AI clay ball brains? That actually cuts the connection between the knowledge creators, artists, and audience?

Our lawmakers, to whom we temporarily entrust the power to shape our destiny, should figure that out.

But.

To get back to our story, of the cosmic digital clay ball:

The tech companies ran planets of our texts into it. Boom.

Einstein and Mussolini

We got an AI chatbot.

“Hello! I am your friendly assistant.

Your recent shopping patterns suggest you are pregnant. Do you want a name for your baby girl?”…??!!!!!

…!!!!??!!

But…!!!!!!?? how does a digital ball of clay begin to speak intelligently? Most of the time, anyway. We are still figuring that out. But we know this: A piece of written text is a piece of persisted human intelligence. At least, a lot of them are. We shoveled planets of this into the learning-clay. It was an engineering feat of unthinkable proportions which I am not qualified to explain deeper.

But, we can all marvel when the superpower clay ball translates Taylor Swift’s lyrics into Shakespearean or explains quantum mechanics as a bedtime story. And have you ever met someone who has passionately read each and every word of their “heros” Mandela, Einstein, and Mussolini? If you meet. Run!

Though the AI chatbots have processed all three in mind-bendingly digital ways, my engineer friends have sweated to check and patch the clay repeatedly to ensure that the Mussolini in the clay doesn’t leak into the light. DISCLAIMER: Still not fully guaranteed as clarified in the disclaimer text of all chatbots.

What is the point of being gigantically intelligent without an inherent moral compass?

But wait, is this super power AI clay ball, intelligent in the same way as Einstein?

Expert thinkers of the field like Oxford’s Professor Michael Wooldridge disagree. In his recent Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize Lecture in 2026, he dismantled the illusion of machine intelligence in AI Chatbots while acknowledging its raw, undeniable power.

Talking about AI Chatbots/LLM, he says “They are statistical models of language that can approximate patterns of reasoning, planning, and problem solving based on [the astronomical] training data”.

That was a mouthful.

He also said “We got these things which we simply dont fully understand. They are on the one hand remarkable but they are on the other hand extremely weird”.

And that definition also applies to the uncle I remember from my childhood.

Still we have to give credit to our uncle’s brilliance. Unlike the chatbot, which needs planets of text, all our uncle needed was a bunch of books and a bottle of whisky.

But we missed the most vital realization about this superpower: What is a piece of text with perfect consistency, zero grammatical errors, and we have planets of them?

The text of a computer code. Boom!…

—— ? ?

Wait. It doesn’t always just work. A lot of stunning engineering work is still needed.

Yes, now? Boom!

The Frontline: Software Engineers

Vanakkam!

I was passionately explaining all this with just the right timing, making my returning radiologist friend chuckle loudly while we caught up in that dark altar queue. My sister took a deep breath and looked away. Hold on, there is some kind of weird siren sounding in the background, but at least the line is moving. I found myself recounting the amazing journey it has been, from the tiny ancient perceptron to AlexNet to ChatGPT. This is a crowning achievement of humanity. A generational collaboration of scientists, innovators, and software engineers.

“Software engineers!”

[ weird siren sounds again ]

In February 2026, Anthropic built a fully functional C-compiler, a kind of software, from scratch with a swarm of sixteen autonomous AI coding agents. This is amazing. A compiler is a peculiar and a well-contained use case, but the feat remains staggering.

As a quick digression, we also have to genuinely appreciate the fact that Anthropic patched their AI clay ball with the crowbar of a moral constitution, exclusively written for it.

We are still in the honeymoon phase with these digital Agent swarms. Early users are reporting similar problems we see from the beginning with chatbots, like hallucinations, though they occur less often. It is reasonable to assume that with multiple agents, even small individual problems can propagate faster. But this is a beginning.

The imagined future is where any one of us can just type a prompt to ask for an inventory management application, for a car factory. A swarm of coding agents will tirelessly prompt each other, in a closed loop, to create our ultra-modern software. While we walk away to wash the dishes.

What if a hundred coding agents can work together to deliver a software product tomorrow? But first. How do human engineers work together to deliver a software today?

I have had the opportunity to look at this closely as a team player, and a team lead over many many years. And, as already critics of coding agents point out, a software team does not just create the software. We own it. I want to go deeper.

What does it mean to “own” a piece of software, at an individual level?

I think of professional ownership, of a piece of work, as a series of three Dials and two Vows.

Dial of Understanding: Guarantee you can add something without breaking or explain why not—either by yourself or redirecting to an accounted owner.

Dial of Anchoring: Account or credit ownership from others when you consume what they own.

Dial of Containment: Establish checks, guardrails and failure radius.

Vow to be transparent: Assure what it can do, what it can’t, and what you don’t know.

Vow to suffer: As a team, accept professional consequences for your assurances within reasonable tolerance—or individually, in an extreme, worst-case scenario.

The dials are complementary, ideally turned to peak or at least high enough to take the vows.

I have seen my team, my self, as well as other teams compromise the dials and mess up the vows to crumble our stack of cards. But we started again.

Once the above are ensured, you can own that piece of software. But ownership does not stop at the individual or one team. It scales. Each engineer owns their piece and cascades that to the lead. The lead ensures those fit together and, in turn, cascades that collective ownership to further stakeholders and the lego blocks builds on. Note. Ownership here is only about software. Only about the work and the things that go into it. People cannot own people.

So what if a hundred AI coding agents work together tomorrow to deliver a software product? Can they own it? They may turn the three Dials of ownership, they may take the vow of transparency or at least give a productive illusion of doing these four. But can they vow to suffer? Can they suffer?

Battle Ground: The Interior Lines

Zoom out of software, what about our world all around?

The Dials and Vows of ownership above, isn’t that true for all professions of humanity?

Consider a doctor who owns the “good health” of a patient for a window of time.

The doctor knows that adding a specific medication into patients’s body—the health system— will not “break” the patient’s “good health”. — Dial of Understanding (High)

They trust the lab report and consume it because they know the technician “owns” that specific data point. — The Dial of Anchoring (High)

For a simple cough, where the Dial of Understanding is high, the patient doesn’t need a hospital bed or a restricted diet. The “good health” here doesn’t demand strict containment. — The Dial of Containment (Low)

A general practitioner holds the Dials and Vows of ownership for a cough, but for serious ear issues, they cannot. Instead, they refer you to an ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat) specialist who can own the health of your ears.

Isn’t this how we built our grand Lego world? By connecting these little brain-heart-blocks called humans with the hinge of ownership? Isn’t this how we touched the moon?

Isn’t that true for press, academia, government, businesses and every other human organization?

A junior lawyer owns a single brief, cascading it to their partner, while a driver owns the safe drive to the destination anchoring it to the Maps App and cascading it to the passenger. Isn’t that true?

Our artists own their creation, cascading it to their muse, or to the world, for eternity.

After all, what is the point of a poem when there is no lover? At least one lover?

Yes the AI can write a poem imitating Eliot with a bunch of metaphors about the “concept” of a father wearing a blue suit. Will it know the wrinkles of the veshtis my father has worn all his life?

These AI clay balls can be utilized in all our professions, yes, but can it own a small piece of work?

Without having a head in the game, without suffering consequences, the AI clay ball cannot have the hinge of ownership to replace a single piece of brain-heart-block in our human lego world. Right?

But.

Suffering needs consciousness, say the philosophers.

Can AI become conscious?

Let’s go find shades under a tree! Please grab a cup of coffee.

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Banyan Tree before the Battle: Matrix Dream

Yes. This coffee. What double? I need Grande! The big cup. Of course I know!

Will this super power AI clay ball ever become conscious with more data, more resources, and better engineering?

First, where does our consciousness come from? Our great-grandparents asked that thousands of years ago, sitting under a banyan tree. Last I checked with our philosopher-friends in jumpsuits? Nope. The question still stands.

But, at least you know you are conscious. Have you heard about the phrase “I think therefore you are”? No I haven’t. Then how do you know if I am conscious?

So, if I look like a human, walk like a human, and talk like a duck. You can do nothing but trust that I am conscious.

Even if this is all a matrix dream, this is the only one we got. My friend. We got to keep it. Keep it good.

Acknowledging another’s consciousness is the rarest of existential suspended judgments, a recognition we mutually grant each other. It is this that gave us the instinct to hit the brakes when a human figure slips into the road, but not for a tumbling piece of small wood. Should we ever grant that recognition to a superpower clay ball?

Even if we wrap that clay ball in a human skin and skeleton? Wait. Should we even put this AI clay ball into a human frame? Isn’t this equally dangerous—like them “gaining” a consciousness we can’t verify anyway? Food for our thought.

One more coffee, please. The same one. What? Why should we bring nationality in everything? Aren’t we all humans first? Who cares if the coffee is Irish. I… Love it! :)

[ Author looks around, takes a deep breath of the pleasant air ]

wow…! :)

Now. Keep consciousness away. Can AI just imitate suffering? The same way bots in video games do by losing virtual gold coins. Yes the current AI coding agents reportedly do it already with reward mechanisms, with carrot and sticks. But. A digital carrot and a digital stick. In the surreal world. Where Super Mario has 3 lives and a restart button.

Whatever the AI creates in the digital world of looping lives, if we want to use it in our real world with just one life, we should own it. Right?

So what if we can stack up multiple layers of dancing cards?

Hold on. I was supposed to ask a different question. I think, I think it was the coffee. Got it.

So what if we can stack up multiple layers of AI coding agents to create a software in the digital world?

Before we use that in our real world we gather teams of human software eng… okay, you know where I am going.

Humans must own every loop, not just be “in” some.

Too much philosophy. AI in its current form exists for years. What do we actually see?

And that, that will be our last section before we warp pup… my goodness! The Coffee!

The Battle: What is the Battle?

AI is most successful in chemistry and biotech, solving problems that have baffled us for decades. With the potential to lift up millions of lives through new medicines and cures. Take AlphaFold AI from Google for example. It is undeniably the gold standard of the field, even winning a Nobel Prize for its creators. So, how should we read this? The AlphaFold predicts a possible chemical compound. But then what?

It is our human Scientists, Researchers, Technicians who sweat in a wet lab to verify and validate the output thrown by the AI machine, relying on their hard-won human intellectual skills to decide if the result is a breakthrough or a hallucination. Discovery takes decades. Validation takes months. So isn’t this a perfect fit for AI use, where the dials of ownership can be turned to peak by our human experts?

Wait a minute! We don’t bother asking if AlphaFold AI is conscious. Just because it doesn’t speak?!

What about AI chatbots? Eat one small rock per day to get the needed minerals in your body.

A generative AI model in its foundational stage recommended that. But no professional dietician worthy of their salt could own it. Yes, it was the early times for AI. Back then, it was like holding a gun that threw diamonds eighty percent of the time. Now it is ninety-two percent. It may get better. Okay that’s too harsh and too Tarantino. What about a short Wes Anderson clip?

Imagine you asked your sister to solve your math assignment over the weekend. The little you cleans her bookshelf and arrange it with perfect symmetry. “Nemo, don’t move! Don’t move! You’ll never get out of there yourself. I’ll do it.”—The television. Your watery eyes are glued to the TV on one side of the frame, while your sister adjusts her glasses looking at your notebook on the other. Pleasant music from the Modern Mozart of Madras, AR Rahman interjects. Everything is colorful, pastel, and pleasing. She gives you the solution just before you leave for school on Monday morning. But then what?

You can show it off in front of schoolmates, but only if you can follow the logic behind her brilliance. Or at least that specific solution, to shield from the cross-questioning of the math teacher, who could never believe that you solved it.

If your sister‘s intelligence was behind the maths solution, these probabilistic language generation machines, meaning AI clay balls carry the billions of lived human intelligences we dented them with. Yes they do the grand beautiful cris-crossing between Leonardo da Vinci, Richard Feynman, and Lady Diana. But we can evolve progressively only as far as we “own” their answers.

AI is spitting out answers from our pockets already. They are starting to flood our offices, labs, and studios, pouring out their decisions, solutions and even finished artifacts awaiting a human expert’s input. Extremely useful. Extremely valuable. They will become as powerful as we are ready to bargain our energy, resources, and data. But.

It is totally upon us how we place these superpower clay balls in human hands and supercharge our existing human organizations, with each and every one of us owning our parts in our grand Lego structures intact. This. We owe to the future generation.

To get back to that dinosaur in our room:

Will these cosmically massive, super powerful, digital AI clay balls be able to kill humanity’s sense of purpose, our jobs?

Possibly not. But.

Our failure to understand them will.

Our failure to contain them will.

Our failure to own them will.

— sAb

(RECORD 002)

I want to thank my friends and family listed below, for reading my drafts, offering critiques, and keeping me motivated. They helped me truly “own” this piece of work.

Alphabetical list:

Christopher Gebray [ Thanks for the encouraging feedback and for being a constant inspiration through your arts. :) ]

Gibu George [ Ryan’s dad. Thanks for the talks, games, and the Irish coffee ‘accident.’ Let’s meet more! :) ]

Hari Krishnan [ Dad of Manthrini & Mayuresh. Partner of Vidhya. From ‘falling-from-bicycle’ days, our talks continue forever. Your feedback meant a lot!]

Kerstin Haack [ Thanks for the ‘three-color’ highlight on the draft—Good, Okay, Confusing. And your valuable critiques and motivating words!]

Kishorekumar Suryaparakash [ Partner of Nivedha. From after-school snacks to world affairs, our talk never ends. I still owe you 10 Rs! :). Thanks for the valuable feedback!]

Manickathai Muthiah [ Younger sister: thanks for watching Finding Nemo with me and for the argument on why something didn’t work in the draft. I fixed them! ]

Ron Watson [ Thanks for the surgical feedback on those specific sentences and for the huge boost of encouragement! ]

Sivasankari Muthiah [ Elder sister: mentioned in essay. A constant inspiration since childhood. (Though I’m still better at math puzzles! :)) ]

Sreenivaasan Gajapathy [ Straightforward words since school days: ‘This works, this doesn’t.’ Thanks for always keeping it real! :) ]

Sudheer Seran [ Thanks for the long AI and tech calls. Run, fall, fly. This is you from school days. Continue :) ]

Supriya Sawane [ Ryan’s mom. Office desk mates to friends. —Please read comments for Gibu above— List is Alphabetical. :) Let’s meet more! ]

Vinod Balachandran [ First close friend, of life and for life. Roaming the world with partner Mala (Also school friend. :) Wow! ) Your feedback meant a lot! ]

Vivek Kidambi [ School lunch talks continue. Thanks for the feedback on the next essay draft—it fueled this one! :)]

Karthick Saravanan, Bharani Chandran, Shakthi Premkumar: [ You guys didn’t do much for this essay directly—but the list feels broken without your names! :)]

Last but not least: Mom and Dad. Who didn’t help with a single word, but made me write the whole essay.

We turned away and refocused on our discussion, agreeing to split up the next day to visit our personal favourite spots, when a voice interrupted.

“Hello!”

Standing right beside us was the girl. She seemed much younger than I expected. Her head was wrapped in a hijab, paired with a soft brown dress, topped with those glowing plastic devil horns. She looked like a character from a children’s show. A small basket hung from her hips, filled with translucent, colourful toys.

“Hello, what are you doing here at this time? Where are your parents?” my friend asked her.

“Hmm… My mom is at home. I am selling these,” she said in clear English.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“I am eleven,” she said.

“Do you go to school?”

“Hmm… Yes.” She held up five fingers and continued, “I am in fifth grade.”

She started sentences hesitantly, but then the words flowed with perfect intonation, confidence, and clarity. She wore a radiant smile. “Do you guys want to buy some souvenirs or toys?” she asked.

I wanted to buy something, but my luggage was on the verge of exploding. My friend faced the same problem, as did our third companion who had already headed to the Airbnb. None of us could carry a single extra gram. My only option was to buy a toy just to abandon it at the roadside or the Airbnb later. But then, an alternative popped into my mind. I handed her some money as a gift.

Her face went blank with confusion for a few seconds. Then, she took it.

We bid her farewell, urging her to return home soon.

“Thanks, I am okay!” she said, turned, and wandered back to her distant spot.

Five minutes passed. We found ourselves engrossed in our mobile phones, surrounded by the rhythmic buzzing of crickets.

“Hello!”

She was back, breathless and beaming, the red horns still glowing atop her head. Before we could speak, she flipped a switch on a small toy and pressed it into my hand.

“You gave me a gift. So, I want to give this gift to you. Please!”

“Thanks!” I said.

She vanished into the dark again. I stood there, holding the lit-up toy, torn on what to do with it.

My friend interrupted, “Five more minutes. If not, we can start walking towards the taxi stand.”

I agreed and glanced at my phone, quickly drowning in a flood of unread messages. Some time had passed. The malfunctioning digital board was still stubbornly lying. In “2 minutes”. I took a deep breath and looked at my friend to suggest we should finally move, but a shadow approached us.

“Hello!” It was the same girl, the same smile, but the devil horns were gone. “Can you please buy me something from the bakery to eat?”

She asked straight out, with no trace of a plea. The way a niece asks an uncle.

“Yes, sure!” I answered immediately.

I told him I’d be back soon and crossed the road with her to the bakery nearby.

“Are you from Istanbul or some other part of Turkey?” I asked.

“No.” She looked at me. “We came from Syria.”

“Do you have siblings?”

“Yes. I have my sister.”

Suddenly, a surge of vehicles drowned out our conversation. Before I could ask something else, we arrived at the bakery.

Unfortunately, they were already winding down for the night and refused to serve us. We scanned the street and spotted another bakery a little ahead, but it looked dark too. I pointed to a small supermarket right next to us that was still open. “Let’s get something in there,” I said.

The shop was cramped, bisected by a cash counter manned by an elderly shopkeeper. He looked at us with confusion, so I explained the situation. After a moment, his face softened. He gave a small smile and a thumbs-up.

I waited by the counter while she strolled through the shop. I heard the soft crinkle of plastic a few times. She returned holding only one item: a beautiful, glossy, bright-red box of tiny candies. She placed it on the counter in front of me, then added a loaf of bread. She glanced at me and walked past again. I kept my expression neutral, though I shared a smile with the shopkeeper once her back was turned. She went to the corner and called for help to reach the top rack. The shopkeeper handed her a packet of baby diapers, which she added to the pile. She slipped back for one more chocolate bar.

When she turned to go back for a fourth time, I stopped her.

“Okay, that should be enough, I think,” I said, offering a gentle smile.

“Okay, okay, okay…” she murmured as if she had been anticipating it, raising her hands in surrender, with a smile.

But then, she grabbed a bulky pack of kitchen paper towels. She placed them on the counter, glancing at the pile — the bread, the diapers, the chocolate bar, the kitchen towels — and then looked at the bright-red candies.

She pushed the bright-red candies away, motioning the shopkeeper to remove them and add kitchen towels instead.

While I took out my wallet to check for cash, the shopkeeper began billing the items and putting them in a bag. I took the bag and handed it to her. Then, I reached out and picked up the bright-red candy box. I signalled the shopkeeper to include it in the bill.

Her eyes lit up when she saw it.

“This is a small gift from me,” I told her. “Because I want you to do well in your studies.”

It sounds dramatic in retrospect, but in that moment, I needed to say it. She gave a forceful nod. “Yes… Yes…”

The shopkeeper said something to her in Turkish — telling her to thank me — but I didn’t need the translation. I was used to her distinctive English-speaking style by now. I could hear the words in my mind, but waited for her to say them. She stepped close and hugged me. She didn’t say a word. She just held on for a few seconds. I patted her shoulder.

We left the shop, said goodnight to each other, and departed.

I walked toward my friend, wondering what was going on in that little girl’s mind. She had accepted money as a gift, walked away, returned to give me a gift, walked away again, and then returned to ask for food. I didn’t see an adult nearby giving instructions, though perhaps I may have missed them. But whatever or whoever was making her do it, I couldn’t doubt the genuineness of her smile for a moment.

Now whenever I walk past the toy she gave me — which sits on a desk in my living room — I pick it up. I switch the translucent red heart on and off, staring blankly. Most of the time I’m thinking about something else. But sometimes, I do think about that night.

I think about the way she was dancing. In that darkness.

— sAb

(RECORD 001)

Author’s Note: A true account from my recent vacation, with details, dialogue condensed and added filler details for narrative flow.

I live in Munich, where advanced urban living meets the serene beauty of a grand village. I come from Chennai, the land of Thirukkural. This is an anthology of couplets written around 2000 years ago touching every aspect of human life, from tax collection to depths of love. Many of them are striking. Here is one.

யாதானும் நாடாமால் ஊராமால் என்னொருவன்
சாந்துணையுங் கல்லாத வாறு.

Since every land and every town is one’s own to the seeker,
why would anyone ever stop learning?

— Kural 397

I am a Software Engineer by profession. I have been part of teams building software for some of the world’s largest organizations. This work brought me to Germany and expanded my world, enabling my travels across Europe and beyond. I am passionate about learning many things that life brings to me. Or sometimes, I run to them.

I am learning so much from others—by listening, observing, and reading. It is amazing how two people can perceive different aspects of the same object and present them in a curated structure of their own. Their signature.

I want to use this platform to share thoughts and reflections from my vantage point. My signature.

It is my way of engaging back. I call them my Records. An archive of thoughts. A piece of my life.

They can take many forms. I am starting with writing because I believe it is the most direct, minimalist and powerful way to communicate expansive ideas. I am also open to exploring other forms of expressing thoughts and recording life. Be it audio, visual, or any new form the future holds.

I want to curiously explore everything that floats with us in the universe, though my primary interests lie in history, culture, science, and technology. I grew up counting the boats on Chennai beaches and now I am counting the peaks in the Bavarian Alps, all the while looking at the world. These might leave a mark on my Records.

I heartily welcome you to join me on this journey as a fellow human.

— sAb

(RECORD 000)