Anupam Basu

Palantir CTO says AI doomerism is driven by a lack of religion "I think the secularists in Silicon Valley are filling the God-shaped hole in their heart," said Shyam Sankar, Palantir's chief technology officer.

Only godless heathens worry about #AI's impact!!! 🙄

www.businessinsider.com/palantir-shy...

It's board meetings all the way down!

AI biggest trigger for IPO: Lenskart's Bansal - The Times of India India Business News: Lenskart is preparing for its Dalal Street debut on November 10, aiming for an $8 billion valuation to fund significant AI investments. The SoftBank-b

So LensKart is about to offer an $8B IPO in India and it's hyping up its claims of #AI based eye testing. Perhaps understandable that he'd want to bandwagon. But alarmingly, there's little mention of either research-based evidence or regulatory approval.

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/ind...

AI models ace their predictions of India’s monsoon rains Some weather forecasts can now be done on a laptop

"This year 38m farmers received forecasts powered by #AI. Rather than simulateing exactly what is going on in the atmosphere, they make predictions by comparing patterns they see in weather data with previous, similar patterns in the historical weather records."

www.economist.com/science-and-...

China’s chipmakers are cleverly innovating around America’s limits They are pushing tools to the edge, scaling up and relying on fuzzy maths

www.economist.com/science-and-...

Government plans stricter AI, deepfake rules; proposes platform accountability The proposed amendments to IT rules provide a clear legal basis for labelling, traceability, and accountability related to synthetically-generated information.

#India is moving towards legislation for the regulation of #AI generated content. All AI content must be clearly labeled.

www.indiatoday.in/india/story/...

JioHotstar drops trailer of India’s first AI-generated series ‘Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh’ The series will premiere on October 25 and will also air on Star Plus on October 26 at 7.30 pm

An entirely #AI rendered Mahabharata.

www.telegraphindia.com/entertainmen...

Cool reflection on the interpretive circularity of models & texts.

We tend to imagine that models tell us about the relations between texts, and differ only by accuracy.

But you can also turn this around and use texts to explore the relations between different models / interpretive approaches.

www.business-standard.com/economy/news...

Cow farts and the economics of #chip production.

Goldman economists on the Gen Z hiring nightmare: ‘Jobless growth’ is probably the new normal | Fortune “History also suggests that the full consequences of AI for the labor market might not become apparent until a recession hits.”

The #AI realignment of labor relations is going to be long and difficult.

fortune.com/2025/10/14/g...

Formalism was the best ism.

City comedy is where it's at, though. Asking students to adapt the concerns of City Comedy into a modern setting is such a fun exercise.

Been in the works for a while, but delighted it's finally out in the world, especially in the current political environment. I contributed an essay on the demonization of migrants in early modern England, a phenomenon that bears dispiriting similarities to our time.
punctumbooks.com/titles/cross...

How the Public Sees Philosophy: Insights from a National Survey in the Czech Republic (guest post) - Daily Nous What do ordinary people think philosophy is for? That's one of the questions a pair of philosophers, Vít Gvoždiak and Martin Zach (Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences) aimed to answer. ...

How the Public Sees Philosophy:
Insights from a National Survey in the Czech Republic | by Vít Gvoždiak & Martin Zach dailynous.com/2025/09/03/h... #philosophy #public #philsky

Break it Down Again; Stand by Me; Shine on You Crazy Diamond; Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.

3/ All that talk of wanting to create an alliance with the non-college working class but accidentally waking up in bed with senior managers rings hollow. When a university rushes to fire cafeteria workers to protect the endowment, it creates a guide map showing fascists exactly where to squeeze.

2/ When it became normal to have tens of billions of dollars in endowments to run universities (and rankings basically became directly correlated with endowment size). Trump is only the visible symptom that knows how to exploit a longstanding malaise. It was a conscious self-serving ride to hell.

1/3 Obviously, much of this is spot on! But I'm skeptical of the "seize the means of knowledge production" flourish. That train left when we decided we were okay with universities being basically hedge funds with attached teaching/research units. When it became normal to pay >50k to get an education

"Al won't save dying languages but community efforts might"

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

America is now one big bet on AI It’s seen as the magic fix for every threat to the US economy

"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."

How China is challenging Nvidia's AI chip dominance Beijing has urged local firms to use homemade chips. But is China ready to turn away from Nvidia?

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Spot the North-American anomaly: only region where social media use is still growing.
Great work by the FT’s @jburnmurdoch.ft.com
www.ft.com/content/a072... “Have we passed peak social media?”

Family shows AI video of slain victim as an impact statement — possibly a legal first AI experts say this is likely the first time that AI has been used in the U.S. to create an impact statement read by an AI rendering of the deceased victim

The AI representation of the murder victim "speaks from the heart" in court!!!

Judge Todd Lang said, "I loved that AI. Thank you for that." He added, "It says something about the family because ... you allowed Chris to speak from his heart."

www.npr.org/2025/05/07/g...

Trillion-Dollar Crash Why Markets Consistently Misprice Breakthrough Technologies & The Opportunity Beyond The AI Rush

A very thorough, thoughtful analysis of the #AI bubble.

blog.siliconroundabout.ventures/p/trillion-d...

Why is this funny? And why AI doesn’t know — yet The longtime New Yorker cartoon ed who turned to writing papers about AI humour

Interesting survey of #AI research on humor.

Should we care if an algorithm "understands" a joke as long as it can classify or even explain it? I think we should, but would have a hard time defending that position because it entails clearly defining understanding.

www.ft.com/content/ee51...

How AI safety took a backseat to military money Heidy Khlaaf discusses the industry shift toward military applications and what it means for AI safety.

www.theverge.com/podcast/7848...

Behind Job Weakness Are Hints of a Productivity Revival. Is AI the Reason? The artificial intelligence investment boom resembles the tech spree that brought a productivity renaissance three decades ago.

"One widely cited report ... found that 95% of 52 organizations surveyed had a zero return on their AI initiatives. This suggests AI has yet to make enough impact to raise the economy’s aggregate productivity."

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/behi...

Data centers in space? Jeff Bezos says it's possible The Amazon founder predicted that gigawatt-scale data centers will be built in space within the next 10 to 20 years.

Meanwhile, Bezos is talking up data centers in space. Yeah, not like the dotcom bubble at all.

"Bezos also compared the surge in artificial intelligence to the internet boom of the early 2000s, urging optimism despite the risk of speculative bubbles."

www.japantimes.co.jp/business/202...

The murky economics of the data-centre investment boom How similar is it to the 1990s telecoms bubble?

The AI data-center bubble. Many reasons this boom is hype-driven, short-sighted, and headed for a crash.

www.economist.com/business/202...