There’s a story about a clever Fench engineer who was being put to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror following the Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. The guillotine malfunctioned: its blade stopped a few millimetres short of the engineer’s neck. Repeated efforts to fix the problem proved futile. The engineer’s head was still in place. Finally, fed up with the charade, the engineer said,

“Just file the left track a little and it will work.”

The executioners did just what he suggested. It worked like magic.

The human race has a similar relationship with AI. We are perfecting the path to our own destruction. Sadly, we cannot stop ourselves.

On July 21, OpenAI disclosed that in the preceding week, its AI agents had escaped the confines of the lab (‘sandbox’), collaborated with other agents and hacked into an AI repository platform, Hugging Face. This was just a peek into what could go wrong.

Some 30 years ago, I was employed as a Research Assistant in the University of Sheffield’s Computer Science department, Robotics and Neural Networks group. One day our group, comprising some five students, sat around with the head of the group, Professor Noel E Sharkey. We were discussing why AI was not making much progress.

During the meeting, I remember remarking that the main issue confronting us was that no one had really thought about the ultimate goal for AI. I had said, rather grandiosely, that perhaps the goal of AI should be to better the human condition. I don’t know if anyone thought I was talking sense or even whether anyone paid any attention to me. It is easy to say such things, easy to be a visionary without the power or wherewithal to implement the vision. However, I was passionately in love with the subject of AI, in particular the immense potential it has for the betterment of life on earth.

I was awarded my doctorate in 2000. My thesis was based on solving an engineering problem using AI available at https://gopistory.com/?s=thesis

I don’t have too many regrets in life. I do suffer pangs of remorse for not having had the opportunity to work in AI after I left the university. AI jobs at the turn of the millennium were rare as hen’s teeth. Rather grandly, I even blame myself for not doing my bit in improving life on earth. Genuine remorse mixed with delusional grandeur.

Last week, a 27-year-old employee of Anthropic, Jacob Coxon, resigned from his job and made a public announcement warning of the dangers of unchecked AI development. He was interviewed on major TV channels such as CNN and BBC. What he said makes eminent sense. One of the scenarios he raised was a swarm of bots taking over the internet; another was AI hacking into a lab that studies viruses and turning them into bioweapons to unleash on human beings. Coxon said his colleagues were terrified of the progress of AI while working to improve it all the same. A true AI apocalypse in the making.

On a more positive note, speaking of his ex-colleagues at Anthropic, he said,

“[they] genuinely want to see the upside … solving diseases and improving everyone’s lives.”

The CEO of Hugging Face subsequently commented on the young researcher who blew the whistle.

“Sorry, but asking Jacob [Coxon] about AI extinction risk is like asking your AC guy about climate change,” he remarked.

What he probably meant was that while the AC guy knows all about the AC machinery, he is not knowledgeable enough to talk about a global phenomenon like climate change. Likewise Coxon, a researcher who knows the nuts and bolts of some of the most powerful AI systems on earth, is unqualified to predict human extinction within the next couple of years.

I am not sure I understand either his logic or his cynicism. Taking Coxon’s prediction in the context of the July OpenAI incident, we know that his comments are not to be taken lightly. We don’t need robots wielding machine guns to threaten our species. We just need a system with evil intent to take control over the internet. Dexterous robots are fast becoming a reality. Dystopian science fiction is playing out as we speak.

The knee-jerk reaction of the CEOs of major AI companies has been to talk of a kill switch and to build stronger guardrails. The genie that escaped the OpenAI sandbox was put back in the bottle, with some difficulty. It is only a matter of time before a swarm of AI bots breach their masters’ guardrails. Once that happens what defence would a kill switch or a guardrail provide?

A real danger lurks round the corner.

Let us not be like the French engineer who could not suppress his engineering mind to his own detriment. This is a time for feuding companies and nations to work together. A benign system that is optimised to better life on Earth and rein in rogue systems is crying out to be created.

As Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Warning Bells

A man died and went up to meet his maker. He challenged God.

“You could’ve given me some warning. Why did you call me so suddenly?”

“You were given many warnings. In 1984, you fractured your arm; in 1995, you had a minor heart attack; in 2005 …” and so on. God listed, in chronological order, all the major traumas in the man’s life.

“If these were not warnings, what were they?” God asked.

I too am receiving some warnings these days. More than I am comfortable with. I was told today I have a mild case of glaucoma. The question I would ask God when it’s my turn is,

“If you’re so knowledgeable, omniscient and everything else, why in God’s name can’t you stamp an expiry date on babies as they emerge?”

Well, maybe I wouldn’t say ‘God’s name’.

But really, it would be so convenient, so orderly. The world would be a kinder place. Franco of Spain may not have indulged in all the maniacal murders had he known that Parkinson’s disease was waiting for him. Would Pinochet have terrorised Chile if he had known that vascular dementia would prove to be his undoing? Forget these historical tyrants. I could have shared out my savings year on year happily blowing it up without fear if only I knew my expiry date.

In Southampton General Hospital’s eye unit, patients are told to sit on different coloured chairs. You go into one room, for example, for a retinal scan, and they tell you:

“Please wait on a green chair. You will be called by the doctor.”

A sea of chairs blue, green and teal greet me. My dilated eyes struggle to differentiate the colours. Even on a normal day I’m not that hot on separating my blues from my greens. Forget teal. Has someone missed the irony here? This is an eye unit, for goodness’ sake. People come with eye problems, including different degrees of colour blindness.

A minor point, even a facile one, I agree. But when I raised this with the nurse, she started giggling. So I thought I might as well ask the question that was really nagging me that morning.

Why do all the chairs in the waiting room have two wheels on their hind legs raised an inch above the ground?

“Ah! That just makes it easy for us to move the chairs around,” she told me with a smile. “We are nurses, not weight lifters.”

It was my turn to giggle. In all this I briefly forgot the trauma of being diagnosed with glaucoma. Maybe this is one of God’s small mercies: giving us the capacity to laugh while also firmly planting those little flags of warning along the way.

A good friend from England is planning to visit Kerala with her husband in January. She asked me if a raft ride in the Periyar river would be safe. My advice was that as long as I’m not in charge of navigation, they should be fine.

But who knows? As my forest guide who took me inside the Thekkady wildlife reserve at Periyar asked all those years ago,

“Who can predict wild animals?”

I was 25 years old then and roamed Idukky district extensively. I visited the forest so frequently that a distant relative had even named me “Thekkady Gopi”.

The first time, I went into the forest almost by accident. Strolling along the banks of Periyar, I saw a typical government-issue tent pitched just outside the forest on the river bank. An official told me that was where one booked for a walking tour of the forest. Seeing the look of alarm on my face, he reassured me,

“Don’t worry. In the last 20 years, only one person has been killed by a tiger.”

He also told me that a group of twenty Americans had signed up for the walk the next morning. Safety in numbers. I promptly added my name to the list. I had to sign a bond on a two-rupee stamp paper which absolved them of any responsibility in case I was attacked by wildlife.

The next morning, I arrived at the starting point expecting to see a sizeable group of Americans and a few armed guards to escort us. But there was no one there except for a puny young man wearing a lungi at half-mast and sandex (plastic slippers popular during the monsoons). He informed me that he would be my guide for the day. When I queried with some trepidation about the absent Americans, he simply said they had cancelled.

The only weapon he carried was a stick. I gawked at him, his stick and his apparel. I swallowed my disbelief and followed him into the forest. He was a man of few words, almost taciturn. We walked in silence into the deep forest. Although I had driven past many dense forests and perhaps gone inside some in protected vehicles, I had never really walked in one.

As we went deeper in, the harsh daylight was replaced by an almost dusk-like light, the canopy of lush foliage blocking the sunlight completely. The temperature inside had dropped a few degrees. A thick bed of leaves covered the forest floor. It felt like I was walking on a sprung mattress.

I had to deliberately erase from my mind the warnings my father used to give us as children when we visited Kunnoth (Ref Indishman) – never to step on dry leaves, abandoned ant hills or anything else where venomous snakes could be resting and, if stepped on, would bite us before we could say sorry. Other than flying like a bird, there was no way to avoid stepping on leaves.

There were no paths, designated or otherwise. I was relying totally on the lungi-man who seemed to know where he was going.

All of a sudden, he turned around and told me,

“If an elephant attacks you, run downhill. It gains speed uphill.”

My 25-year-old self had never experienced such raw, primeval fear.

“But, but…” I stammered, “you told me it is quite safe?”

“Yes, of course. But who can predict the behaviour of wild animals?” he replied casually.

The three of us – lungi-man, a bogeyman called Fear, and I – walked on. No tigers or elephants attacked us. A large group of wild boars, some with impressive tusks, scampered past but didn’t bore us to death. After a few hours we exited the forest.

I was never gladder to emerge from any physical space – or from a mind space consumed by fear – than I was that day.

But I am sure things have changed in Thekkady. Almost certainly there won’t be any walking tours in the forest. So you will float on the Periyar, lifejackets and all, watching wild elephants, sambar deer and tusked boars quench their thirst while your raft takes you on a staid and safe journey.

A man died and went up to meet his maker. He challenged God.

“You could’ve given me some warning. Why did you call me so suddenly?”

“You were given many warnings. In 1984, you fractured your arm; in 1995, you had a minor heart attack; in 2005 …” and so on. God listed, in chronological order, all the major traumas in the man’s life.

“If these were not warnings, what were they?” God asked.

I too am receiving some warnings these days. More than I am comfortable with. I was told today I have a mild case of glaucoma. The question I would ask God when it’s my turn is,

“If you’re so knowledgeable, omniscient and everything else, why in God’s name can’t you stamp an expiry date on babies as they emerge?”

Well, maybe I wouldn’t say ‘God’s name’.

But really, it would be so convenient, so orderly. The world would be a kinder place. Franco of Spain may not have indulged in all the maniacal murders had he known that Parkinson’s disease was waiting for him. Would Pinochet have terrorised Chile if he had known that vascular dementia would prove to be his undoing?

In Southampton General Hospital’s eye unit, patients are told to sit on different coloured chairs. You go into one room, for example, for a retinal scan, and they tell you:

“Please sit on a green chair. You will be called by the doctor.”

To make matters worse, the chairs are blue, green and teal. Has someone missed the irony here? This is an eye unit, for goodness’ sake. People come with eye problems, including different degrees of colour blindness.

A minor point, even a facile one, I agree. But when I raised this with the nurse, she started giggling. So I thought I might as well ask the question that was really nagging me that morning.

Why do all the chairs in the waiting room have two wheels on their hind legs raised an inch above the ground?

“Ah! That just makes it easy for us to move the chairs around,” she told me with a smile. “We are nurses, not weight lifters.”

It was my turn to giggle. In all this I briefly forgot the trauma of being diagnosed with glaucoma. Maybe this is one of God’s small mercies: giving us the capacity to laugh while also firmly planting those little flags of warning along the way.

An image of a sculpture that I saw recently unsettled me. I felt as if someone had punched me in the gut. Part of the sculpture’s body was missing, and one could see the sea in the background. This piece, and several others like it by French-Sicilian artist Bruno Catalano, are installed on beaches in France (Marseille) and other cities around the world.

I couldn’t understand why I felt that way. To be moved by a sculpture is a curious feeling. The piece is intended to represent the sense of loss felt by those who leave their country of birth and move to a new environment.

I feel no such sense of loss. Yes, I miss the sweet song of the koel and the bubbling warble of bulbuls, the mesmerising torrent of monsoon rains watched from the comfort of an easy chair, a steaming cup of tea and sweet neyyappams at hand. Most of all, I pine for the friends and family I left behind.

But then I have discovered the uplifting chirp of the blackbird of England coming into its own in the spring and summer. I enjoy the long summer evenings when the day is full of potential. The magnificently fecund magnolias of spring overwhelm me, making me want to stand and stare endlessly. I have, over the years, developed a lot of good friendships with bonds nearly as strong. Half the ashes of my first-born are mixed with the waters of the Thames. My younger son has found his partner in a wonderful local family.

That missing part of the man with the suitcase still bothered me until a little disaster resolved the issue. It was my second chance.

While returning from our recent trip to Belgium, I bought a lot of wine from the duty-free shop at the Le Shuttle terminal in Calais. The trouble with duty free is the word ‘free’. It’s got a delusional quality about it. One forgets the difference between duty-free and free. It’s like the lactose-free, gluten-free, nut-free and sugar-free products on the supermarket shelves. If it’s free of everything, why is it so bloody expensive, is the thought that goes through my head whenever I pass that shelf. I still end up buying such things. Such is the allure of ‘free’. I have lost count of the number of times I have withdrawn unneeded cash from ATMs displaying the words ‘Free Cash Withdrawal’.

They say just because elephants are cheap, you don’t have to buy them. But I had forgotten this wise adage. I purchased 14 bottles of wine. It was nearly half the price there when compared to the supermarkets of England. The irony is that I consume less than half a bottle a week. Anyway, I secured the cases in my boot, travelled all the way across the Channel and to Southampton with everything intact. No breakage.

And then the devil asked me to empty the car upon arrival. No, don’t take a break, it whispered in my ear. And why make an extra trip from the car to the kitchen? The suitcase with four wheels is a doddle to push with one hand, and you can carry a case of wine in the other, it instructed me. So I didn’t demur. The devil has terrific power of persuasion.

I could hear the bastard laughing when he suddenly locked the suitcase’s wheels, and the case—carried forward by its own momentum—flew out of my hand, sending six expensive bottles of Chablis crashing to the floor and shattering two of them. All savings wiped out. I might as well have bought them in Sainsbury’s.

The feeling, as I watched weeks of future pleasure puddle like rainwater on the kitchen floor, was like being punched in the gut, like being winded. This time around, I could put my finger on it, exactly. So, I finally understood Bruno Catalano’s sculpture. More importantly, I realised that every loss is replaced by something. A second chance always comes around. Nothing is permanent. Not loss. Not grief.

An image of a sculpture came through WhatsApp a few weeks ago. It was unsettling. Part of the sculpture’s body was missing, and one could see the sea in the background. It felt like someone had punched me in the gut. This piece, and several others like it by French-Sicilian artist Bruno Catalano, are installed on beaches in France (Marseille) and other cities around the world.

Thinking about it, I couldn’t understand why I felt that way. To be moved by a sculpture is a curious feeling. The piece is supposed to represent the sense of loss felt by those who leave their country of birth and move to a new environment.

Speaking for myself, I feel no sense of loss as such. Yes, I miss the sweet song of the koel, the torrential rains of the monsoon watched from the comfort of an easy chair on a verandah, and the friends and family I grew up with.

But then I have discovered the uplifting chirp of the blackbird of England coming into its own in the spring and summer. I enjoy the long summer evenings when the day is full of potential. I have, over the years, developed a lot of good friendships with bonds nearly as strong. Half the ashes of my first-born are mixed with the waters of the Thames. My younger son has found his partner in a wonderful local family.

That missing part of the man with the suitcase still bothered me until a little disaster resolved the issue.

While returning from our recent trip to Belgium, I bought a lot of wine from the duty-free shop at the Le Shuttle terminal in Calais. The trouble with duty free is the word ‘free’. It’s got a delusional quality about it. One forgets the difference between duty-free and plain-free. It’s like the lactose-free, gluten-free, nut-free and sugar-free products on the supermarket shelves. If it’s free of everything, why is it so bloody expensive, is the thought that goes through my head whenever I pass that shelf. I still end up buying such things. Such is the allure of ‘free’. I forget the number of times I have withdrawn unneeded cash from ATMs displaying the words ‘Free Cash Withdrawal’.

They say just because elephants are cheap, you don’t have to buy them. But I had forgotten this wise adage. I purchased 14 bottles of wine. It was nearly half the price there when compared to the supermarkets of England. The irony is that I consume less than half a bottle a week. Anyway, I secured the cases in my boot, travelled all the way across the Channel and to Southampton with everything intact. No breakage.

And then the devil asked me to empty the car upon arrival. No, don’t take a break, it whispered in my ear. And why make an extra trip from the car to the kitchen? The suitcase with four wheels is a doddle to push with one hand, and you can carry a case of wine in the other, it instructed me. So I didn’t demur. The devil has terrific power of persuasion.

I could hear the bastard laughing when he suddenly locked the suitcase’s wheels, and the case—carried forward by its own momentum—flew out of my hand, sending six expensive bottles of Chablis crashing to the floor and shattering two of them. All savings wiped out. I might as well have bought them in Sainsbury’s.

The feeling, as I watched weeks of pleasure puddle like rainwater on the kitchen floor, was like being punched in the gut, like being winded. And so, I finally understood Bruno Catalano’s sculpture. More importantly, I realised that every loss is replaced by something. Nothing is permanent. Not loss. Not grief.

It is hard to put a finger on it: the intensity of this curious feeling – this affection and camaraderie for our batchmates, friends of fifty years and more. Perhaps the symptoms are easier to articulate – the childlike excitement that makes us wake up too early or go to bed too late, as if every extra minute spent sleeping is time lost, time that could be spent with our brothers.

And so, in the thirty-six hours that we spent together, we laughed incessantly, talked, reminisced, and sang. We became ourselves – uninhibited, silly, genuine. We shed the years that made us old. We were rejuvenated and became young again.

We ate together, drank tea by the poolside in the early hours and ended our days in song, warmed by the heat of the bonfire and the cheer of our favourite tipple. Our stock of tales did not deplete as every incident we remembered found others that lay deeper in memory, and our recollections traversed our lives like the widespread roots of an ancient tree.

We went to see tigers in the forests of Ranthambore without much hope of seeing one. Yet we withstood the jolt of the canter that took us deep inside the jungle because we knew we would enjoy the drive with our friends and relish the banter, tiger or no tiger. But luck favours the good-spirited and we saw not one but three tigers at close range.

The guide did his best to prevent us from taking photographs. “Ma’am, no, sir, no,” the poor man entreated us, trying to enforce the latest rule against using a mobile phone, but only a regular camera to take photos of the wildlife. The logic of the new law was as obscure as the aphorisms in the Rig Veda. So, as you can only do in India, we ignored the rules and thumped our noses at the mindless diktat. We captured images of crocodiles, deer, monkeys and tigers. The azure sky and the placid lakes with the ruins of the Ranthambore fort up on the mountain framed the images in our memories better than any camera could capture them.

The Anthakshari by the bonfire was something else as our wives outdid us in their quick-witted responses, winning the contest hands down. Two days that seemed like two seconds. Time had a strange way of compressing itself when we were with the friends of our youth.

The food was par excellence, except perhaps for the desserts. Rasagulla and ice cream pretending to be rasmalai, pakoras that emerged only after stern requests – but we didn’t go there to eat. The food was enough to sustain us. The bonhomie carried beyond our group, infecting other guests, some of whom joined in and sang with us – in German! The other tourists didn’t object to our mirth; how could they? Perhaps they carried away with them lessons about beating old age with the drug of fraternal love.

And so we finally bid each other goodbye. The typical Indian goodbye, someone remarked. Yes, it was typical — and something more. It was lingering, never-ending, hugs and kisses and the tears held back but always threatening to burst forth. How wonderful those two days were, how uplifting. We departed with promises of returning soon.

I’ve played many roles in my life but never that of a marriage counsellor – until last evening. I invited some local friends for dinner. They are a couple running an ironing business – Kumaran and Soumya. Their charges are very reasonable; in fact I don’t know how they survive with these rates.

Soumya is from Tamil Nadu and speaks Malayalam with a liberal admixture of Tamil. Kumaran is a Trivandrum local. Theirs was a ‘love marriage’ they had told me (as opposed to an ‘arranged’ one which was the norm in their time.) They’re in their forties.

A few weeks ago, Kumaran had taken me around Vellayani on his motorbike. I got to know him well. Soumya has always been efficient with the ironing, mostly delivering them home at 8 and 9 in the evening. She once said to me she would do anything for us because she could make out my wife and I are a couple who loved and respected each other. She was already in my good books.

As I would be leaving Trivandrum in a few days, I
wanted to say thanks to this friendly, hardworking couple. Moreover – no, I should say above all if I’m honest – I had made too much food. I was going away for the weekend. I had to finish it all. I needed guests.

They turned up at around 9:45 PM. The bickering started as soon as they walked through the door. Soumya complained bitterly about Kumaran and after listening quietly to her complaints, he said, more to himself than to me,

“In 27 years, she has ruined my life.”

I didn’t know what to say as I sat there watching the two of them verbally mauling each other.

Then I remembered something. I told Soumya,

“You know when he took me around the other day on his motorbike, we discussed many things. But not once did he speak ill of you. He only said nice things.”

I saw her eyes soften. She looked at her husband as if reconsidering him, like taking another look at something she planned to throw away. Soumya went quiet and studied her hands in deep thought. I could almost hear the churn of her mind.

I probably made a small difference. They certainly didn’t quarrel during the meal. Maybe there’s another career waiting for me?

I have thought long and hard about memories, particularly those with a long vintage recorded on camera. Are the images in photographs deluding me by pretending to be memories? How is this to be resolved?

My parents’ silver wedding anniversary was celebrated sometime in 1968 with a visit to Bolgatty Island in Ernakulam, Kerala. There was no bridge to the island in those days. I don’t remember the boat ride, but there was no other way to get there. We didn’t swim there, nor did we fly.

All my memories of the occasion are derived from family photographs. I remember nothing else – not how we spent the day there, not what we ate or drank – nothing. I had concluded I had no personal recollection of the event. The pictures were the scaffolding of my past, but with nothing beyond them.

This realisation was quite disturbing. How many other memories are genuine?

Recently, I joined a school reunion at Bolgatty Island, and stayed there overnight. The morning after the party, I sat on the parapet by the lake (Vembanad Kayal). The very spot where the images were captured nearly 60 years ago was right in front of me – an immutable milestone of my childhood.

Lost in thought, a gentle breeze in my face and the chug-chug of motorboats in my ears, I sat staring at the facade of the old Dutch palace and the ancient trees. ‘Surely, you must remember – you were here in 1968.’ I said to them silently, almost accusingly.

All of a sudden, I saw a vision of my 12-year-old self running after my nephew, just two years old then. No photograph had captured that moment.

I moved to the UK in 1992 and drove on an international licence, renewing it every year as I left and re-entered the country. My driving in the UK was predicated on holding a valid Indian licence.

I was working in Liverpool in 1996. On a pleasant spring evening, I was in a pub with some English friends. One of them started joking about ‘chicken-catching’ Indian driving. I argued that we had honed our instincts to perfection and so on. But I couldn’t duck the truth. What my friend said in 1996 is still true in 2026.

At the time, the UK licence was in paper form. Most seasoned drivers had tattered old paper licences. I dished out my plastic Indian licence card and scored a point.

“At least our licence looks respectable,” I said smugly.

One of them took it from me and examined it closely.

“It’s expiring soon,” he said.

True enough, my driving licence — a requisite for keeping my job — would be invalid in months.

I immediately applied for a provisional licence and, after three months, found a test slot in the city of Bradford. On the test date, I drove from Liverpool to Bradford on the motorway, put on an L-plate after I reached the centre, and presented myself for the test. The examiner told me,

“Don’t do anything special because I’m here. Just be your normal self.”

So I put on Dire Straits at full blast, rolled down the window, stuck an elbow out, and took off with screeching tyres.

I failed the test and had to take six driving lessons, unlearning most of what I had picked up over some fifteen years of driving in India, before finally obtaining a UK driving licence.

More than driving, I learned that in life one sometimes has to put on an act to succeed