Tag: technology

Scientific understanding and AI

Let me draw attention, especially of those interested in scientific research, to a relevant review article in Nature Reviews Physics titled “On scientific understanding with artificial intelligence“

Below are a couple of paragraphs that caught my attention:

“Scientific understanding and scientific discovery are both important aims in science. The two are distinct in the sense that scientific discovery is possible without new scientific understanding….

…..to design new efficient molecules for organic laser diodes, a search space of 1.6 million was explored using ML and quantum chemistry insights. The top candidate was experimentally synthesized and investigated. Thereby, the authors of this study discovered new molecules with very high quantum efficiency. Whereas these discoveries could have important technological consequences, the results do not provide new scientific understanding.”

The authors provide two more examples of a similar kind, from different branches of science.

The authors conclude:

“Undoubtedly, advanced computational methods in general and in AI specifically will further revolutionize how scientists investigate the secrets of our world. We outline how these new methods can directly contribute to acquiring new scientific understanding. We suspect that significant future progress in the use of AI to acquire scientific understanding will require multidisciplinary collaborations between natural scientists, computer scientists and philosophers of science. Thus, we firmly believe that these research efforts can — within our lifetimes — transform AI into true agents of understanding that will directly contribute to one of the main goals of science, namely, scientific understanding.”

Worth reading the full article. Link here.

PS: Prof. Siddharth Tallur (IIT, Bombay) on LinkedIn raised an important question.

Nice.. thanks for sharing, will go through it. Although a lot of brute force seems to be passed off as understanding these days (brawn = brain?) I wonder if AI and ML of the varieties we have today are advancements in computing or intelligence?

My reply:

The computational capability is undoubtedly great, and probably the coding/software domain has been conquered, but there is a tendency to extrapolate the immediate impact of AI to every domain of human life, where even basic tech has not made an impact. That needs deeper knowledge of interfacing AI with other domains of engineering.
Embedding AI in the virtual domain is one thing, but to put it in the real world with noise is a different game altogether. That needs interfacing with the physical world, and there is also an energy expense that doesn’t get factored into the discussion. It has great potential, and I’m eager to see its impact on the physical infrastructure. Parallelly, it is interesting to see how it has been sold in the public domain.

made a video to explain the main blog:

My Response to Kaplan

Recently, anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan, who has a background in physics, made the following comment, which was circulated on X. Below is the excerpt:

Below is my response:

A Remarkable Human Being = Remarkable Attribute(s) + Human Being

The first term in the RHS can be replaced by AI, but not the second term, for the following reasons.

  1. Machines, including AI, can surely change the way humans think, work and live, but it will be difficult to match human connection. A machine can enhance human life, but can it inspire a human life?
  2. People inspire people. Ask a child or any adult who inspires them. It will generally be a fellow human being. Machines add value, but human beings represent a valuable life. We utilize the former, and get inspired by the latter. It is this inspiration that propels people forward to do things that may further turn out to be remarkable. This contribution is not easily quantified, but it is hard to gauge a human life without inspiration.
  3. People like Ed Witten, Ashoke Sen and Terry Tao add value to humanity not only through their work and ideas, but their lives show that human beings can think and do something remarkable. It assures human beings that, individually, our species can do something good.
    Human beings derive meaning by interacting with fellow human beings and are inspired by the interaction. They also get inspired and draw meaning by studying people from the past. A human’s search for meaning and purpose is always in the background of other human beings. We are 8 billion plus, and it is hard to ignore each other.

It will be very unusual to find a serious student of theoretical physics who says I am inspired to live by ‘ChatGPT’.

Probably a young Kaplan, too, was inspired by a fellow human being! So, my question to Mr. Kaplan.
Who inspired you to do physics?

Five Aspects of the Fifth Pillar – A Philosophical Perspective

In reference to a recent article on higher education in the Economic Times, a well-known tech entrepreneur and philanthropist wrote the following on X/Twitter: “75% of Indian higher education institutions still not industry-ready. Lot of work left to transform. But the 21st century requires education, research, innovation, and startups as four pillars of a university.”

This is a thought I do support, but I think there is one more important meta-pillar, perhaps a ‘foundation’ on which all these pillars are standing, and that is called ethics. Below are five aspects of ethics that I think need further attention.

  1. If one observes some of the major contemporary and pressing problems in our world, they can be connected to the ethical aspects of how humans function. A vital part of our educational system should re-emphasize this connection and make it central to everything that is done in a society.
  2. Ethics has two important elements to it: first, it has a philosophical grounding and connects to how humans function in a society. Second, it has an important connection to how trust in a society can be developed. Most of the discussions on ethics generally focus on the first element from a morality perspective, whereas the second point has an equally important utility and an economic connection.
  3. Ethical principles have great utility. It is important that we never keep it as an implicit aspect of human endeavour. Instead, we should start everything on the ethical grounds and build it up from there, including businesses, because a strong ethical foundation probably would be the best thing to happen for economic progress in any society, because trust is so important among human beings, and it is one thing that probably brings humans together. In the long run, the meaning of ‘prosper’ critically depends on the meaning of ethics. Being prosperous without being ethical is detrimental to any human pursuit. Zero-sum games are exciting, but in the limit of many games, the number of people who lose will be far more than the people who win. Instead, cooperative games have much larger dividends to all players and are inherently connected to a concept called as double thank you moment.
  4. The philosophy of ethics is something which the world has to revisit in greater detail, especially in an era where technological implications are driving human life in directions which we have not anticipated. One may think that raising ethical issues might hinder progress, but my argument here is that, instead of hindrance, one should look at it as an important requisite for human societies to not only survive but also to flourish. Large human endeavours cannot sustain without trust, and that trust is reinforced through ethical behaviour.
  5. Without ethical implications being factored in, it would be hard to really design anything related to technology. A case in point is the social media restrictions in countries such as Australia. Technology has the amazing capability to move fast before the philosophical debates can come in, but it does not mean that philosophy has to be completely ignored. The downstream of a scientific idea can become a product in a market, and positively impact society, but this evolution has a fellow-traveller, and that is ethics. The feedback loop is incomplete without the ethical considerations, and therefore, it should be looked at as an important ingredient in any human design.

There is an inherent connection between cooperation and trust, and that is founded on an ethical principle. The world requires an ethical recap, and it should be part of individuals, institutions, and governments. There is a rich history of ethics in all the cultures across the world, and it is worth revisiting them in a new light. Perhaps it is high time that we “Make Ethics Great Again.”

ShuX in IISER Pune

Yesterday evening (10th Jan 2026), Shubhanshu Shukla, the recent Indian astronaut, was at IISER Pune as part of the ‘India Science Festival’. There was a huge crowd gathered to see and listen to him. Within IISER, it is rare to see such a massive gathering for a science event, and it was heartening to witness this on a Saturday evening. Thanks to schools and colleges in Pune, science and science-related activities get traction from the people of Pune (especially younger people). They enthusiastically participate in many events related to science.

 Such a gathering is very important for at least three reasons:

  1. It connects a scientifically oriented person to the public and thereby connects them to science.
  2. It showcases that there is some science-related activity happening within the Indian scene.
  3. It sends out a message to people that icons can be created out of people who do science funded by the public.

I would want to emphasize four other points:

  1. Scientific icons are as good as the science they represent. A major part of the credit should go to the organizations that supported and trained him, and this includes ISRO, NASA and the Indian Air Force.
  2. To put an astronaut in space, it takes a lot of effort at various levels of society. Public support is vital for such an effort. Public icons such as Shubhanshu Shukla are a good representation of what investment in science can do to the morale of the public, especially for young people.
  3. The created momentum should not be lost, given that recognizable people, such as astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, have made an imprint on young people. This should be followed up with measures to recruit them for science and technology.
  4. Space science and technology, astronomy and astrophysics have always been among the most fascinating domains to attract people into science. Many Indian scientists and a past astronaut, Rakesh Sharma, have played an important role in this pursuit. One should not forget them.

Let me conclude with a word of appreciation for Pune city. It is not a capital city, but its enthusiasm for intellectual pursuits is high, and it attracts a lot of enterprising people (recently, there was a public policy conference that had some amazing people). If it can get a lift in its public infrastructure, it can create its own path in the landscape of science and technology.

Create to Understand

Below are two quotes on the blackboard of Feynman’s office in Caltech which were found just after his death.

 
The first of these quotes by Feynman is a guiding principle for anyone who wants to learn. The second quote is an idealistic one, but a good approach to becoming a ‘problem-solving’ researcher. Feynman was a master of this approach.
 
From a philosophy of science perspective, researchers can be both ‘problem creators’ and ‘problem solvers’. The latter ones are usually famous.
 
Michael Nielsen, a pioneer of quantum computing and champion of open science movement, has an essay titled: Principles of Effective Research, in which he explicitly identifies these two categories of researchers, and mentions that “they’re not really disjoint or exclusive styles of working, but rather idealizations which are useful ways of thinking about how people go about creative work.”.
 
He defines problem solvers as those “who works intensively on well-posed technical problems, often problems known (and sometimes well-known) to the entire research community in which they work.” Interesting, he connects this to sociology of researchers, and mentions that they “often attach great social cache to the level of difficulty of the problem they solve.”
 
On the other hand, problem creators, as Nielsen indicates, “ask an interesting new question, or pose an old problem in a new way, or demonstrate a simple but fruitful connection that no-one previously realized existed.”
 
He acknowledges that such bifurcation of researchers is an idealization, but a good model to “clarify our thinking about the creative process.”
 
Central to both of these processes is the problem itself, and what is a good research problem depends both on the taste of an individual and the consensus of a research community. This is one of the main reasons why researchers emphasize defining a problem so much. A counterintuitive aspect of the definition of the problem is that one does not know how good the ‘question’ is until one tries to answer and communicate it to others. This means feedback plays an important role in pursuing the problem further, and this aptly circles back to Feynman’s quote: “What I cannot create, I do not understand”.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

3 Questions for the AI age

3 Questions to Ponder in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

  1. What will you do with the time you gain from the utility of AI?
  2. How will you utilize your individual short-term and long-term memory?
  3. What is your definition of intelligence in humans?

I think it is worth thinking about.

Sir MV on Education

In India, “National Engineers’ Day is celebrated every year on September 15 to honor the birth anniversary of Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, one of India’s greatest engineers”. Sir MV, as he was known, is one of the 20th-century Indians I admire. He was a forward-looking statesman who contributed immensely to building India (literally and figuratively). MV was a well-read and well-travelled person for his era, and wrote a few books and memos that are still pertinent to the current developments in India and the world.

Reconstructing India (1920)

One of his books, Reconstructing India (1920), reveals his thoughts on how and why India needs to reconstruct itself based on knowledge in science, technology and humanities. The title page is shown below, and the book is free to read online, thanks to the Internet Archive.

The book, as mentioned by MV in the preface, was written just after the First World War, and contemplates problems faced by India in light of geopolitical developments. In the 17 chapters of the book, divided into 4 parts, MV discusses specific issues faced by India, and proposes that political and administrative reforms can help India become a progressive society.

The largest part of the book is on economic reconstruction, in which he proposes contemporary methods (for the 1920s) to improve various sectors of manufacturing, including agricultural technology and communication media.

The third part of the book is on social reforms, and in there, he has a dedicated chapter on Education, which caught my attention, and I found it relevant even for today’s India.

Education, Humanities, and STEM

It is important that students of science and technology have a good exposure to some aspects of the humanities, including economics, history and philosophy. The pursuit and ability to choose good problems in science and technology critically depend on the social and economic structure in which they are practiced in universities and research institutions. MV anticipated this and highlights it as:

“Secondary and university education, though producing many able recruits for subordinate positions in the Civil Service, does not provide the men needed to carry on the work of agriculture, engineering, commerce and technology. The provision for training in economics and history is inadequate, and the study of those subjects is even discouraged. An attempt is actually made to teach economics in such a way as to render India’s emergence from a state of dependency difficult.”

Even in 2025, I would suggest that STEM students pay attention to economics, as it anchors them to understand the need and functions of a society, and therefore, their work can be calibrated accordingly. This is not to discourage open-ended research, but to understand how natural sciences are connected to the societal thoughts and needs. It gives us a broader understanding of the context, which is so important while understanding the evolution of ideas.

Comparative Education Systems

There is always a lot to learn from various societies and cultures. In order to do so, one needs comparative analysis. This helps one to choose some good elements from a society that can be emulated elsewhere. MV compares and comments on the 1900s British educational system in contrast to the German and Japanese counterparts. Note that India in the 1920s was still a British colony, and in a way, MV is critical of the system in which he himself was educated and trained. As he notes:

“Britain herself has had to pay a heavy price for her hand-to-mouth policy in regard to education. The educational chaos still existing there compares unfavourably with the great yet orderly progress made by Germany and Japan, both of which countries, after weighing and testing the educational systems of the world, absorbed the best of all.”

These were words written long before the Second World War, and give us a glimpse of how German and Japanese systems were functioning in the 1920s and had a lot to offer to the world. Of course, history took its own path, and German and Japanese society had other ideas.

Incidentally, I am writing this piece sitting in Leipzig (eastern Germany), and I am amazed by its architectural marvels that date back centuries. Indeed, German society had (and has) a lot to offer to the world. As MV indicates above, we need to absorb the best that is on offer. In doing so, we also need to reject that which is not good for any society.

Liberal Education and Financial Support

He further adds how liberal education adds value to a society, and calls not only the government but also the people to recognize the importance of financial support for education.

“Both the Government and the people must recognize that only by pursuing a liberal educational policy, and making generous financial provision for schools and colleges can they lift India out of her present low condition and ensure rapid progress.”

These words still hold good, and as a society, India has to re-emphasize modern education that helps us become not only better doctors and engineers, but also better human characters that can add value to the “modern” world.

Call to Action

In the final part of the book, MV makes a passionate appeal to the people of India, calling them to take action and move towards becoming a progressive nation:

“Do the people of India propose to profit by the lessons which world experience has to teach them, or will they be content to allow matters to drift and themselves grow weaker and poorer year by year?
This is the problem of the hour. They have to choose whether they will be educated or remain ignorant; whether they will come into closer touch with the outer world and become responsive to its influences, or remain secluded and indifferent; whether they will be organized or disunited, bold or timid, enterprising or passive ; an industrial or an agricultural nation ; rich or poor ; strong and respected, or weak and dominated by forward nations. The future is in their own hands.”

Indeed, the future is in our hands, and these words written more than 100 years ago still resonate loudly. We need more engineers like Sir MV. The reason he was so effective was that he combined thinking and doing. Importantly, the lesson we can learn from MV’s life and by reading this book, is that an open mind can grasp good ideas at any time and anywhere. Implementing those ideas is an equally important challenge, and MV was up to this in his own way. Are we, as Indians, open to this prospect and engineer our future?

ChatGPT – an experiment

Below is a small experiment with ChatGPT (GPT-4o, which is OpenAI’s most advanced model as of July 2025).

I asked for thoughts (from authentic sources) from Indian writers on the nature of the writing process (handwriting vs typewriting).

It confidently gave me quotations from Rabindranath Tagore, R.K. Narayan and U.R. Ananthmurthy. I was intrigued, and below is my conversation:

me: list the quotes from Indian writers above and give the exact sources

Chatgpt: I couldn’t find reputable sources for the exact quotes I previously suggested by Indian writers—so it’s safer to reconsider them.

This is something I have been observing with LLM chatboxes, especially when it comes to the sources that may not be mainstream. One may even say it is hallucinating, but after enquiring further, it said:

The quotes I initially provided appear to be popular paraphrases or second-hand interpretations, but none could be verified in primary texts or reliable interviews.

Then, it asked me if I wanted to use authentic sources to be presented to corroborate the initially mentioned sources. I said yes, and below was its reply:

Here are verified quotes from Rabindranath Tagore, with clear attributions to reliable sources—unfortunately, I couldn’t locate authenticated quotes for other Indian writers on writing methods

The quotes that it gave were peripheral to my initial question. It identified two to three quotations, but none of them were directly connected to my initial query.

There may be at least 2 hypotheses that I can draw from this, which need further testing:

  1. ChatGPT and its kind may be getting trained more intensely on sources that are mainly anglophonic, and its geographical distribution of sources may be skewed. Online literary sources from countries such as India may not be as dense as, say USA, the UK or even some European countries. Will depositing more authentic sources online, including their translations, help the authentic discovery of information from countries such as India?
  2. With the current developments and model training, there may already be a bias in the answers that LLM chatbots give. It may reinforce many viewpoints from Western repositories that may sometimes be disconnected or irrelevant to the user outside Western geographies. In that sense, new information is being built on old information. Are we entering a stage where data deposition asymmetry is creating an asymmetry of discovery?

I know these questions are not trivial to answer, but for LLM chatboxes to be authentic, they need to address questions with proper citations. I know some of them are trying to do that (eg, perplexity AI), but I find the links it provides for certain focused questions are not up to the mark.

My inference:

  1. I am cautiously optimistic about the developments and achievements in source-based LLM interfaces, especially when you feed an authentic source (eg, NotebookLM).
  2. But LLM chatboxes may be hyped when:
    • It comes to its capability of sourcing authentic information, and
    • The immediacy of replacements of existing knowledge systems.
  3. LLM chatboxes should be treated as an experimental tool for utilitarian tasks where the information can be verified independently.
  4. It is important to take the bottom line of ChatGPT seriously: ‘ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.‘

Willow in comparison – Google quantum chip

In scientific research, comparative analysis is an excellent way to objectively quantify two measurable entities. The recent Google quantum chip (named Willow) does that efficiently as it compares its capability with today’s fastest supercomputers. The comparison note on Google’s blog is worth reading.

In scientific analysis, such comparison teaches us three things:

a) how a scientific boundary is claimed to be pushed?

b) how a benchmark problem is used to achieve comparison?

c) what is the current state-of-the-art in that research area?

Some further observations on the work:

  • The theme of the Nature paper reporting this breakthrough is mainly on error correction. Technically, it shows how error tolerance is measured for a quantum device. This device is based on superconducting circuits, which were tested first on a 72-qubit processor and then on a 105-qubit processor.
  • Interestingly, as the authors mention in the paper, the origins of the errors are not understood well.
  • The paper is quite technical to read, and, to my limited understanding as an outsider, it makes a good case for the claim. The introduction and the outlook of the paper are written well, and give more technical information that can be appreciated by a general scientific audience.
  • There is more to come ! It looks like Google has further plans to expand on this work, and it will be interesting to see in which direction they will take the capability. The Google blog shows a roadmap and mentions their ambition as follows: “The next challenge for the field is to demonstrate a first “useful, beyond-classical” computation on today’s quantum chips that is relevant to a real-world application. We’re optimistic that the Willow generation of chips can help us achieve this goal.”
  • In the past 12 months or so, there has been a lot of buzz related to AI tools (thanks to GPTs, Nobels and perplexities :-), which are mainly in the realm of software theoretical development. This breakthrough in the realm of ‘hardware’ tells us how the physical world is still important!

More to learn and explore…interesting times ahead..