Machine learning holds huge potential in giving an efficacious twist to the way technology is leveraged today (‘The Wednesday Interview – Juergen Schmidhuber, “AIs won’t really rule us, they will be very interested in us”, December 20). Robert Hanson’s ‘Sophia’ robot, and now a Saudi “citizen”, is the latest in line to truly embody the legion of adept humanoid robots. Driverless cars can be game changing on Indian roads in mitigating the heavy loss of lives due to rash driving. How this will be implemented in combination with stringent adherence to traffic rules would be interesting.
AI finds leviathan applicability in areas ranging from medicine, mining, manufacturing, security and education, to name a few areas. India must eschew its lacklustre approach towards AI R&D. ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ can embolden efforts in this regard.
Anjali B.,
Thiruvananthapuram
The singles player
The last singles player of merit from India was Vijay Amritraj himself (‘Sport’ page – “Good singles players needed, says Vijay Amritraj”, December 19). To churn out singles players who can compete at international level, the first step is to spot talent followed by sustained encouragement from both parents and the Sports Ministry. Some players may need sponsors too, especially when one is thinking of competing on the foreign circuit. There should also be a conducive environment to grow as a player.
In India, all these factors are absent as almost every sport, barring cricket, is glossed over. Parents are also unwilling to take chances at the expense of the child’s education. There is not even one Indian singles player in the top 100, which says a lot.
V. Lakshmanan,
Tirupur, Tamil Nadu
