Old intelligence, the kind that propels humanity forward, or backwards as some of my friends suggest, comes from old places with old instruments and all are books.

The first, that can be traced precisely to Egyptian scrolls on papyrus, then to the Torah, the study of which over thousands of years, I'm sure, altered the minds of its readers and led to all those sorcerer-vizirs in Persia and Greece and Caliphates, that survived long enough to the Renaissance to engender what we now call the Sciences.

There is a third in the far East, but even that traveled from the Second in India via the influence of Buddhism. We now frown on the archaic religions but back in its day, this was the vehicle of thought for elders who pondered on the nature of existence. The Intelligence of India, unlike the unified doctrine of The Western God, is fragmented into large numbers of things, Gods, Demons, fauna, herbs, men. Numbers invariably flow into Mathematics, into Ramanujan, Aryabhata, Bose, Rao, Bhatt.

From this tradition comes our unfortunate hero Sushir (lion-like in Urdu?), not only top of his class at Berkeley, but I'm not sure if you know that he came in first in many very competitve coding competitions before joining OpenAI.

I am an armchair imaginer, and I imagine his elation at his job, his salary and his apartment in the posh and with-it San Francisco neighborhood of overachievers and lime green cafes serving avocado toast with an exotic fruit shake. I imagine his dedication to his important work, his ever heated arguments with his coworkers and bosses, not realizing the thread of national security in the seams of an altruistic (so sold) public service to benefit all. His indignation we can read in his posts that mildly designate him as a whistleblower. Are we supposed to feel despondent over copyright infringements? Or was there more to come? Were the machinery of big money behind the emerging technologies that breed billionaires? Was it adamant at the insider knowledge to be divulged? By the inherent brashness of youth and ego of past accomplishment? Or is this a warning shot to others in similar situations? Maybe he wasn't privy at all to the undercurrent Intelligence at work and the desired goal is far more sinister? That instead of knowledge for all, the objective is suppression of information? It's filtering through the political (politics as religion) lens for the common good, one version of the knowable for the masses, another for the dark web of power that will brutally eliminate any threats to itself for all to see.

Every now and then we get a glimpse of the infighting, a hint of what's coming our way. Is it evil? Is it necessary for the common good, better minds than ours having pondered the hard choices to come? I only have questions. The only thing I know for sure is how amorality has become the norm and that is surely not a good omen.


Jam24