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Karma, Free Lunches– Lessons from the world of LLM

If you do not believe in Karma, you got to think again. If you think there are free lunches, then you must be living under a rock. Remember when Gmail offered 1 GB of MailBox at no cost. It was not just mails, it was a slew of utility in the form of tech, tools and apps that made our lives seemingly easier. We mailed, we messaged, we reviewed, we blogged, we vlogged, we trolled, we bought, we sold, we shared, we shamed, we lapped up the free internet with both hands and drank from the hose and as we kept drinking the ocean of soda-pop (internet) from one end, we were filling up the ocean with more fizz with every time drop of information that we put into it. This ocean of information is the super intelligence which manifests itself today as Gen AI- Open AI, Gemini, Grok… Simplistically, this is nothing but the sum total of all our collective Karma on the web. The Web that fed the AI, has the Ying and the Yang and everything in between. We are not far away from a day where we switch our...
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Everything is overrated

  Everything is overrated - money, career, marks, success, failure, popularity, relationships, trends, fashion, sex... (especially sex - all the titillation thrust at us lifelong across all forms of media and entertainment. You just can’t get a break from the only formula some humans think that humanity needs. Now the AI algorithms think so too :)) If you think you are not scoring enough as yet on one or more of these aspects, do not fret. There is enough time for you to get bored with whatever you are desperate for today, just relax. So, what are we here for, anyway. The answer I liked the best so far was from a sermon that I heard from a monk recently. In summary, he said, we all are a part of the superpower (God) that created us. We have over a period forgotten what our origin is and what we are capable of being. We have relegated us to be human like when we are perfectly capable of being God like. Our aim in this lifetime is to get close to becoming one with The One. Almo...
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Avil Pori, Nel Pori & how they managed to beat Darwin’s Theory of Evolution?

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Happy Karthee or Happy Karthigai Deepam . This is a festival that falls a few days after the Diwali festivities are done and dusted and a few days before the well-awaited year end holidays. This is typically celebrated by the Hindus in South India. Karthigai is more religious than the more social yet religious Diwali. I don’t remember buying new dresses for Karthigai, unless you bought one too many for Diwali and saved one for Karthigai, as an afterthought! Also, though some folks celebrate this festival by bursting crackers, I don’t remember buying crackers specifically for Karthigai, unless you got tired at some point in Diwali and yes saved it for Karthigai, again as an afterthought! Enough said about the light & sound, Let’s just say Diwali is the more popular cousin. Sweets can’t be too far away when we talk about festivals and because I need to eventually get to the title of my blog.  For Diwali the sweets that we make, eat, and distribute come in many forms and shape...
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The World Cup that did not have a Winner!

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As if on cue to my r ecent blog post on ICC rules that are crying for change , we witnessed one more farcical ICC rule at play in the most decorated match played in 2019, yes the world cup final, and it significantly upped the luck factor for one of the teams involved in the well contested battle. I do not have a problem with the rule where the match gets decided by the most number of boundaries scored by a team even if after the super over the score remains a tie, which was the case for this match.  We need something to break the tie and this is one way where ICC chose to reward the team which played more bold and entertaining cricket. Rightly so, England, amidst muted celebrations lifted the much coveted trophy that they so badly wanted. If they so badly wanted it, then why were the celebrations so muted? Well I guess possibly because England felt guilty being awarded 4 extra runs for an overthrow during the last over.  Not that they could not have won otherwise, bu...
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4 simple changes ICC can bring about to not let down the game of Cricket

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Sports, in general, has its share of luck. For cricket however, the impact of the so called “luck” is profound. We all think it is a level playing field for both the teams, but we reasonably know well that it is not! The Toss, the conditions of the pitch, the weather, the rain, when the rain comes, algorithms to determine what’s the target for a curtailed game, the mood of the umpires and these factors(luck) that influence the game just goes on and on. Here are 4 changes (3 simple, 1 a bit more complex) suggested that can reduce the "Luck" factor in the game. This blog outlines  four strategic recommendations  aimed at reducing the influence of  luck and unfairness  in professional cricket. I first take a hard look at the  Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method , proposing a more flexible system of  multiple targets  to better reflect match situations during rain delays. Another suggestion involves using technology to  halve the runs  awarded for...
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Taxes this year, is your incentive next year

2016 A.D will go down as a landmark year in the history of India. Demonetization came in as surgical strikes on Black Money (In the process it also temporarily affected lives or normal people who are law abiding as well - but the inconvenience was more than welcome as it was a part of the war on black money.) Let us assume that over a period of time the above initiative increases the tax paying population of the country significantly from the current single digit percentage of population who do pay taxes. It is very important for a nation to make the people lovingly pay taxes instead of grudgingly or forcibly doing so- along the lines of some of the welfare nations of Scandinavian countries. How can we turn around this behavioral trait? The below article explores a simple way to start https://www.change.org/p/finance-ministry-incentivise-income-tax-payers-make-them-feel-proud-to-pay-their-taxes When will this be a reality?
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Managing Innovation

Innovation has always excited me. It meant doing something better and different from what was expected. I have invariably moved on to roles and opportunities which required innovation. In each of those roles, when it was felt that we had innovated enough at that point, I have been lucky to move on to a different role.   Over the course of my career in both IT Products and IT Services organizations, I have had opportunities to both manage innovation and be managed to innovate in structured and unstructured ways. Based on my experiences with innovation- first hand, observed and hearsay, I have tried to pen down my gospel for managing innovation. My gospel for managing innovation: 1.        Quality over Quantity One of my most important learning in managing innovation is that when it comes to innovation, quality and not quantity is the way to go. What I mean by that is, while it might seem very rational and logical to institutionalize inno...
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