Rahul Gandhi and Artificial Intelligence

Raju Korti

Rahul Gandhi. (Grab from Congress party website)

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi has an innate gift for making news -- mostly for wrong reasons. The forty-plus man-boy may have become a butt of ridicule with an endless stream of concocted and real jokes but he manages to find silver linings. If the party sources are to be believed, Rahul is headed to the United States where he is likely to address a gathering on Artificial Intelligence, the science that makes machines think like humans.
At the Silicon Valley, Rahul "will expand his thoughts about artificial intelligence". The two key words in that quote from the party sources are 'thought' and 'intelligence'. It presumes Rahul can think and has the human intelligence to hold forth on something as technical as Artificial Intelligence.
The party is genuinely convinced that drafting Rahul to an utterly scientific pursuit as Artificial Intelligence will bring back knowledge and implement it at the policy level in the party's vision documents. It is anybody's guess what would be Rahul's intellectual investment for the knowledge returns that the Congress party is desperately seeking to get. Of course, all this subject to whether the party leaders are left with any vision. Given the dismal state of the party, it could do with some Artificial Intelligence to pep it up since all semblance of human intelligence has proved counter-productive.  
Rahul invariably manages to get the country's ears when it comes to offshore visits. With as much cynicism as Prime Minister Narendra Modi does for his foreign jaunts. Remember the long sabbatical that he devoted to introspection -- which he called meditation -- after the party's debacle in the 2014 elections. If there was any tangible outcome of that meditation it has not reflected in Rahul's speech and action. Recently he met Biotechnology experts in Norway although little to nothing is known as to what transpired in that meeting. It needs more than intelligence to understand the connection between Congress and Biotechnology. Unless Biotechnology can help it arrest the party's sliding electoral graph after a series of shattering defeats and anti-incumbency sentiment.
I recall celebrated Physicist Stephen Hawking saying that the Artificial Intelligence -- a science still in its infancy -- will wipe out the human race one day. I hope the Congressmen survive to see that day.

The politics of Cabinet reshuffle

Raju Korti
I will choose to skip a dissection of the Union Cabinet reshuffle by the Prime Minister yesterday. The Media has already done a comprehensive post mortem on the PM's penchant for bureaucracy at the expense of career politicians or his "master-stroke" by bringing in a woman as the Defence Minister or why the jinxed railway ministry finds no takers.
I am inclined to believe that cabinet reshuffles are a blessing in disguise for the Media to stretch its fertile imagination on the politics of reshuffle, euphemistically called as analysis. Most of it is based on the personal perception of the analyst or the way he is slanted into writing it. An intriguing aspect of all such analyses is they all sound very convincing because there is nothing unconvincing or impossible about politics. It is for the reader to take it or leave it because he is no less slanted. There is more politics in the analysis than it is in the reshuffle.
I have done quite a few such analyses and trust me, they give you full scope to labour over with a logic that comes with years of experience. As a journalist who has spent more than three decades in this thankless profession, I can assure you that writing an analysis is much easier than getting hard news and stitching a story. In short, analyses are an emphatic way of telling the readers that they are first class idiots who cannot comprehend or decipher things on their own.
Confined mostly to the desk as editor, I recall I would often ask reporters and correspondents to seek a one-on-one with the prime minister or the chief minister on what went into the dropping or the induction of a minister since neither the PM nor the CM think they owe an explanation to the people to let in on why an aide was axed or replaced. It is the prerogative of the PM/CM to do so" is the specious stock line that people who mandate them to power are asked to be content with.
Since it is difficult to access the PM or CM and deadlines sacrosanct, analysis offers an easy way out. For the ever conjecturing and speculative media, analysis has more juice than threadbare information. So freak out.
In the editorial meetings there is near unanimity on analysis being an effective way of conveying the news behind/beyond the news. This cause is effectively helped because there is never an official explanation forthcoming on what prompts the PM or CM to rejig his team. In any case the Media knows it will never get the true answers. Its a win-win situation for the government and for the Media. The government is spared of the blushes and the Media some leg work!
Truth always doesn't have to be naked. At times, it prefers to be draped in a skimpy skirt which reveals and yet hides. Analysis is that skirt.