Personal Musings

This blog is intended to be just a jumble of thoughts that hit me and need not necessarily mean anything.

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Location: Kerala, India

Water flows ...

Thursday, September 28, 2017

The advent of the Post-Intelligence era

How many men does it take to change a light bulb? One for reporting that the bulb needs to be changed, one for allocating money for the bulb, one for counting the money and handing over money, one for buying a new bulb, one for removing the old bulb, one for inserting the new bulb, one to verify that a bulb has been changed, one to supervise the bulb has been changed, one for backup just in case any of the above didn’t do their job, one to recruit all these people, one to oversee everyone worked, one to pay for all these people. Whooh!

In the past, one person could change the world. We had the Gandhis, the Mandelas, the Shivajis, the Marthanda Varmas who singlehandedly changed the history of entire nation state. But all this was before Artificial intelligence(AI). When people started seeing how useful AI really is, they started realizing that many of the job profiles don’t actually do much work. Our own Rashtrapathi Bhavan, for instance, has a job termed “Cyclist” whose profile says carrying letters from the gate of the Presidential palace to the post office(PIN 110004) inside with a monthly salary of more than 8000 and perks. A typical organization has 2-5 levels of managers whose only job is to ensure that the rest of the people do their job.


In the meanwhile, AI was evolving to become better at doing tasks one at a time. The assault of AI started with games(chess, Go, etc.), continued on to mundane office work, and has now already matured enough to replace job profiles from receptionists to software engineers! The advent of cloud computing, Internet of things and Big data, the magic trio, has transformed computing to an entirely new level. Industry 4.0 has ensured that productivity has increased manifold while bringing down the labor required. So what about the people who are losing job? Universal basic income-- the idea that every citizen is paid a fixed amount replacing all the subsidies-- is gaining traction among both socialists/left-liberals and capitalists. So how much money are we talking about. In India, the median monthly incomes of the five income quintiles are roughly 3000, 5000, 8000, 11000, 13000 respectively. The top 5 percentile makes about 18000 pm on an average. If we assume a payout of 10000pm, the outlay works out to 8 lakh crores! And that’s per month!



So how many do we need to change a bulb? With AI and robotics around, its probably NONE. But, the real question is: what kind of job would the rest of us do?

Open up: Life is good

We are often blinded by our own preconceived notions. Here’s how.

There was once a crow that got separated from his friends. He saw an empty pond and landed near it. Unsure about dangers of this unknown pond, he hesitated to go near the pond. He saw a rabbit come near the pond. It too hesitated and left without drinking water. A monitor lizard came running near the pond. It stopped, looked at the crow, and then returned back. A little while later, a crocodile came walking. It briefly entered the pond and then continued walking straight. Seeing so many animals avoiding the pond, the crow thought that the water in the pond had some problem and flew away.

After flying for a couple of hours, the crow saw one well around which lots of birds were sitting. It landed there and used its crowd handling skills to reach near the water. There was only a little water. The crow somehow managed to quench its thirst. Afterwards, it joined the regular chatter with the other birds. While in passing, it mentioned about the pond that it skipped. Listening to this, a stork told it, “What stupidity did you do? That was the best pond for us birds in this whole area. The bottom of that pond is so bad that no crocodile or lizard, not even a hare goes to that pond!”

The crow understood its mistake.

The crow missed drinking from the best pond because it had started with doubting the quality of the
pond. All later observations only added to its bias. In real life too, we often start with similar
preconceived positions and fail to reap rewards. So, next time when you enter a new situation, try to
openly meet the situation.

Electrification: past and future

Electrification in India recently came into focus, courtesy the Saubhagya initiative of the Government of India(GoI). Let us try to see where we stand over the years. In 1947, only about 1500 villages were electrified. Now, we are talking about 5.8 lakh village electrified. Where does our rural electrification stand today? 99.25% covered. In 1947, the installed capacity was 1362 MW. By August 2017, the total installed capacity has jumped up to 3,29,226 MW. Over the past 70 years, our installed capacity has been growing at a compounded annual growth rate(CAGR) of 8.15%. (For comparison, our GDP has grown by approximately 7.6%.) Another interesting statistic is the per capita consumption of electricity: 16.3 units in 1947, 1075 units in 2016. A CAGR of 6.25%.  In terms of per capita consumption, we don’t stand that well. In USA its 12,077; in European Union: 5,391.  

GoI is a continuum, even though the members of the cabinet change periodically. When we started, we did not have much of a grid to talk about. The administrations over the last 70 years have worked tirelessly to bring near 100% energy connectivity. Our per capita consumption has been steadily increasing despite our near 10% decadal growth of population. In the meanwhile, energy profile is also changing. An LED bulb of just 9W can replace a 60W incandescent bulb, and last four times more.  The brushless DC motors are bringing down energy need for fans and motors. The current focus on distributed power(Solar initiative) is trending towards meeting all energy needs with 12V DC powered by local renewable resources. These are exciting times for engineers of all streams to improve the quality of life of the common man in India. 

(Article word limit was 300. This article is soon to appear in Newsletter. All views expressed are personal. )