Posts

Showing posts from September, 2009

The Human Behind the Leather Jacket

Image
Jensen Huang. AI-generated illustration based on a photograph. When I first saw the news about Jensen Huang, I almost scrolled past it. Another achievement for Nvidia, I thought. Another statement about AI. His name has become so closely associated with both that I expected little else. When my wife asked whether I had seen the reports, I dismissed them. “You know, everything is fake news these days. Don’t believe everything you read.” It was an easy response. Perhaps too easy. Was I questioning the reports, or was I reluctant to believe something troubling about someone I admired? Then, over the weekend, came his letter to Nvidia employees , acknowledging that he had been unfaithful to his wife and apologizing to his family and colleagues. That was difficult to read. His resignation followed a few days later. I have followed Nvidia since the late nineties, when desktop computers ...

Rounding off in style

My school days were fraught with difficulties when it came to Maths. I could never understand why 2+2 had to be 4 or why 1+2 had to be 3. It was like Swami (from RKN) learning to solve Math problems in front of his father. Addition and subtraction itself were leaning toward astronomical proportions of difficulty, so there was no way anybody could question my abilities when it came to the mammoth multiplication and division problems. It was at an abysmal dismal level. It took me days, rather years to figure out that multiplication and addition were related by an intricate complexity. 2x3 is nothing but 2+2+2 was a startling revelation learned over the ages, after several years of mutual painstaking experience; mutual because my teacher and my mother used to wield the stick and I used the bear the pain. I had a grudging resolve never to play with numbers because they played around me in weird ways. Division was an altogether different experience. The strict voice still echoes in ...