What is the end game of this AI race ?

This is more of an open question, than a rant, though it might read more like the latter.

30 November 2022. According to Google, that is when Open- AI launched their flagship AI model : Chat-Gpt. We all know what happened next, the initial versions were full of bugs, and problematic, but eventually it improved. In the coming months, other competing tech companies release their own versions of AI models and applications. 

So, By the end of 2025, humanity would have lived and coexisted with generative AI for three years. And the landscape has been permanently changed. 

But how ? Well, lets see, there is still a lot of AI slop, incorrrect data and biases in the answers generate by AI, but things have slowly improved maybe ? But the real impact can be seen in the real world now, and some of the people most impacted are the folks who helped build AI in the first place.

Unemployment has grown. The first impacted were artists of all kind: painters, musicians, singers.. and even actors. The abundance of art available online was used to (sometimes illegally) to train AI models, which can now efficiently recreate original works, but heavily influenced by human artists. Work which was traditionally given to artists, everything from posters on the street, ads online to vfx and entire movies, are now delivered by AI. This resulted in a big strike in hollywood in 2023. After 5 months, an agreement was reached in hollywood on how to use AI, without replacing the human artist. 

The next impacted seem to be everyone else: more and more office/desk work can now be automated via AI bots/agents, which can easily be trained to take over from a human. And the folks in technology seem to be hit pretty hard. The problem can be seen amplified in countries that do not have labour laws protecting the employees in place. Earlier this year, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) axed 12,000 employees in its largest-ever layoff round. Rival Infosys is touting AI bots it says can slash manpower needs by up to 35 per cent. 

As of now, it is the youngest employees joining the workforce that are most impacted; and how ! They were keen on gaming the system by using AI, but seem to be losing at the final level. At first, students were excited about using AI to complete their course homework. Then the professors caught on: they started using AI to assign tasks , create new challenges, and even grade students work. But in the endgame, new graduates from universities are unable to land their first jobs. The reason: companies are now using AI to automate those entry level jobs, which were done by fresh graduates upto a few years ago.

This pattern , and problem, is now being reported from about every country in the world, and there does not seem to be an fix anytime soon. The reason probably is that companies do not see it as a problem in the first place, they are happy with the lower costs of running things, without the added 'baggage' of human resources. But eventually , the problem is going to overflow from fresh graduates, to even experienced working professionals.

So that got me thinking: what is the end game of this flow ? The way the world economy is setup, human beings are an necessary part of the whole flow. 

It is the humans that consume goods and services, everything from groceries to 3k smart phones and millon dollar homes. 

It is the humans that travel and spend on things they do and do not need. 

It the humans that pay taxes, and vote in elections, and pay for utilities and services.

If every human being can be replaced by AI, who is going to buy all the goods ? You know, the same products that these AI embracing companies are producing. Banks need people to take out loans, that is what generates its revenue. Hospitality companies need poeple to travel, for work or pleasure, or their whole business will collapse, as was seen during the great COVID lockdowns. And every other private company is trying to sell something to a human a the end of their supply chain.

So eventually there are going to be things to be sold, but no one who can buy. Which is the technical definition of a recession. 

Which is likely where governments are going to wake up to reality. The private companies are definitely going to self-regulate, it is in their best interest to profit off replacing humans. The most likely stop to this mess will likely come from federal governments stepping in to slow, and eventually stop the carnage.  Some political party will have to take a hard stand, and work for the human again. You know ,the folks who actually vote and pay taxes. 

I just hope it does not take that long.

The H1B system is broken. Heres a doco.

 

Here is a doco.

It does a good job of summarizing some of the issues, and the rampant felonies being committed in the program, and even names some of the big felons.

But like most such documentaries, it falls short of providing viable solution to the issues.

But good watch.

Today, the Drishyam plan is in progress

This weekend is August 2, Saturday; and August 3, Sunday. For fans of Malayalam movies, these dates might stir memories from the plot of the 2013 Malayalam hit, Drishyam. In the second half of this trend-setter, the (antagonist) police investigation try to prove that the protagonist family were home on the 2nd during a crime being committed. The family, led by the patriach Georgekutty, consistenly prove that there were not home , and were visiting and stayin the nearby town.

August 2, Saturday. And August 3rd, a Sunday.

Its a fun trivia to remember.

Jurassic Rebirth - they, uhh.. found a way.

So it finally happened.  years later, they made a 6th sequel to the original Jurassic Park movie, trying to steal every dollar from us viewers. I had stopped watching the movies after the massive disappointment of movie 4. And had vowed never to watch another sequel in the theatres again. But you know life..is strange.

Now as I write this, the reviews of this new movie is polarised - 50-50. And that is so spot on. Some of the sequences in this movie are the silliest, and cheesiest of the entire franchise, much worse that the whole weaponizing-the-dinos bit. But some other sequences in this movie are the stuff of horror, easily the scariest bits of all the Jurassic movies so far. Its as if the movie was directed by two completely different people. But the bits I liked the most are parts where they clearly went back to Michael Crichton's original two novels for inspiration, and ..uhh..found a way to bring back that charm.

Like the whole T-Rex river sequence - my favourite part of Rebirth.. That whole plot point is from the first Jurassic Park novel. In the book Alan Grant and the two kids find a way back to the main complex. We are an inflatable boat on a river for hidden tunnels through a waterfall. (Fun fact: in the first novel, Lex is a 4 year old little girl crazy about baseball, and always carries a pitchers glove. Tim is older, an nerdier elder brother, protective of his little sister; they switched it around for the first movie. ) . To make this work in this movie story had to create an entire new family of father and two daughters and a straggler boyfriend.  And they have re-created that sequence exactly as mentioned in the book. And it works, it really works. Then entire theatre watch completely silent for the entire seven minutes sequence.

And the whole supermarket mutadon sequence was clearly a callback to the kitchen sequence of the first movie. 

But right in the opening minutes, they have copied a plot point from the second Jurassic Park novel. The secret facility is shown undone by a chocolate wrapper. In the book "The lost world" a character attracts velociraptors because they dropped candy wrappers.

And cue in the wonder - the inspiring , iconic music of the first movie returns in all its glory. But the sequence on which it is shot is just director Gareth Edwards copying off his first monster movie - two huge creatures embracing each other.

And red flares. Lots and lots of red flares.

If this movie works it entirely because they've gone back to their roots. There is something scary about bunch of humans visiting a monster infested island. Like King-kong, like the anaconda movies, even those alien predator movies - a bunch of silly humans in the territory of bad animals is just the recipe of a summer movie. But I am surprised that it took the studio so long to realise this and come to their senses. There is no place for logic in it, and is best enjoyed with that part of your brain turned off. And in a theatre with a huge screen.

Crichton had a genius idea. And Spielberg gave it wings. But everyone else is just making things worse with every sequel.

Rabbit hole

Aha, fun days. Its nice getting some time to yourselves. And what's more fun than  reading ? A bit of writing. 

I went down a long rabbit hole recently. In a good way. I have always enjoyed reading, and comics and cartoons in that order. Earlier this year I read that The Tintin comics entered public domain this year. Not around the world, only the US copyright.

You see ,everything written or published by any author has a copyright, during which that work cannot be copied. The law works different in each country. But here is what google's ai summarized:

In the United States, the copyright on the original Tintin comics expires 95 years after publication. This means that the first versions of Tintin, which debuted in a Belgian newspaper in 1929, entered the public domain on January 1, 2025. Therefore, as of today (May 29, 2025), the US copyright on Tintin has already expired. 

Now does that mean one is now free to copy and use the character as one sees fit ? Beats me, I am not a lawyer.

But reading upon this news brought back memories. And a bit of time travel. You see, the Tintin comics were the first real cartoon/comic books I read. Uptil that point I only ever read the cartoons published in Indian newspapers. Most of which were political, although the Hindu published syndicated cartoons/comics from the West : Tarzan, Spiderman etc.

The school I used to attend to, one day finally decided to get brand new books; and these reignited my  love of reading. The complete works of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, many other thrillers and non-fictions, and the World Encyclopedia (remember those). It was the time before accessible , cheap internet, so folks had to find their stuff offline the hard way.

But among the acquisitions, was the complete color publication of The Tintin comics. This was soon to prove a famous among the school students. The simple, dark lines and many colors, and the humour from 60 years prior just resonated. Tintin , the young 20s something lad always found a way to travel around the world with his little dog, without having to answer questions at passport control, or booking a separate seat for his dog ! The Tintin world was a simplified but still rich snapshot in time.

My favourite book (maybe for most) was of course the Unicorn-Rackham works. Author George Remi, more famously known as Herge, found a way to get some time travel within the storyline. In the first book, the timeline shifts from the 1920s to 1670s, when captain Haddock recounts the travels of his ancestor, who was supposedly a capable captain in King Charles II's navy, the English navy. It features pirates, and wooden ships, and classic cutlass fights. I suppose pirates and sail ships have always stirred the imagination of the young reader. And of course: treasure. Cutting back to current times, the trio (musn't forget Snowy) decide to hunt for pirate Red Rackham's sunken treasure.

I came home and started reading and playing the story to my kid. And the little one got hooked.  There was a plethora of questions about pirates and life at sea at the time ; questions I was not really prepared for. 

"What's the larboard  ?"

"What's the booty?"

"Gunpowder?"

Man of man..the questions kept on coming. I had no choice but to bring in more books & movies on the topic.

We end up watching the live animated movie by Spielberg, after having watched the animations from the 90s.

..fast forward 2 days, we were now watching Treasure Island, the 1990 version starring a young Christian Bale as Hawkins.

The movie was fun but attracted more questions. Hawkins was clearly too young to be serving in a place like that, but times were different. And how does the treasure finding work ? Is it always "finders, keepers" ? Not in the real world, but law is different in adventure fiction.

Coming back to Tintin, it was fascinating reading how teachers were using the comics to teach world history. There is something about the clear drawings, and the colorful and caricaturized characters, the colorful, but still child-safe language, and references to all the cultures and countries depicted: someone actually took time and effort to work on them, and it is clearly visible. There are memes, and ai generated content ..etc..Tintin will live on in imagination and on the internet forever.

And that was quite a rabbit hole.