IEEE R10 Student Innovation Poster Competition in Bali, Indonesia, October 2026
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IEEE R10 Student Innovation
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Friday, April 17, 2026
Professor R. Narasimhan: Birth Centenary
Professor R. Narasimhan: Birth Centenary
Much has been written about Professor R. Narasimhan (RN) —
computer pioneer, institution builder, and one of the sharpest minds of his
generation. Anyone looking for dates, milestones, and achievements will find
the Wikipedia article useful. His book, “Artificial Intelligence and the study
of Agentive Behaviour” contains selected papers he had published.
This piece is not about that RN!
This is about the RN I knew as a person — my mentor, my PhD
co‑guide (along with Professor J. R. Isaac), and a remarkable human being whose
influence shaped my early academic life.
Lunches, Conversations, and a Curious Mind
RN was a true gentleman, and a natural magnet for
researchers from wildly different fields. Most afternoons, you could find him
in the TIFR West Canteen, talking to computer scientists and biologists, and an
occasional psychologist, radio astronomer, or nuclear engineer at a six-seater
table. I was lucky to be part of that circle.
These were not casual lunch-table chats. RN was deeply
fascinated by cognitive psychology and brain sciences. He believed — long
before it became fashionable — that artificial intelligence must learn from animal
and human behaviour and the functioning of the brain.
Because of this, our table had biologists more often than
physicists. Many of them were studying C. elegans, the tiny
millimetre-long worm with just 302 neurons that still manages to learn and
remember. RN loved that fact. It fit perfectly with his conviction that
understanding simple biological systems could illuminate the future of AI.
My friend Ramesh Sinha from Radio Astronomy would join us
sometimes. And occasionally, M. R. Srinivasan — founder-chairman of the Nuclear
Power Corporation — would walk from his office across the street and sit with
us. He was RN’s friend.
Bananas, Cheese, and a Life of Simplicity
RN had a small ritual at the end of lunch. He would buy two
bananas and a cube of cheese from the canteen, wrap them carefully in paper
napkins, and take them home. That was his dinner.
There was something touching about that simplicity. “High
thinking, modest living” was not a slogan for him — it was his way of life.
NCST Days and Guest House Stories
Later, when many of us from the TIFR Computer Group moved
out to create the National Centre for Software Technology (NCST), RN became a
key member of our Governing Council. After retiring from TIFR, he moved to
Bangalore but continued to visit NCST and stay in our guest house.
The guest house had two rooms. On rare occasions, RN had to
share it with another Governing Council member — an eminent computer scientist I
will call Prof 2.
I lived on the same floor, so I often heard the stories.
RN had a strong dislike for house lizards. If he spotted
one, he would immediately call the building watchman to come and chase it out.
The guest house had a common bathroom, and Prof 2 once told me that RN politely
asked if he could take his shower first. “I don’t like a wet bathroom,” he
said.
These small moments captured the man perfectly — brilliant,
disciplined, gentle, and quietly particular about the things that mattered to
him.
Looking Back from Today’s AI World
When I think back to those lunches and conversations about
brains, behaviour, memory, and learning, I feel a quiet pride. RN’s focus and
judgement were decades ahead of its time.
Today’s AI revolution is based on artificial neural networks
— ideas that echo the very biological inspirations RN had urged us to pay
attention to.
Srinivasan Ramani
April 17, 2026
P.S.: I had written the first version of this article but
had asked MS Copilot if it would help in improving the long sentences and
passive sentences. Copilot did that but had the gumption to go further and offer to
create a “polished, blog‑ready, informal version of my article — warm,
readable, and faithful to my voice”. It offered to keep it “conversational,
reflective, and lightly narrative, the way a personal centenary tribute should
feel”.
I said “go ahead. Here is my article,” and gave it the text
of my article. What you see above is the version Copilot produced! Then, I
asked it to produce a painting-like image from a photograph of RN. I had that
image two minutes later! I have reproduced it above.
I wish RN were here to see the levels AI has reached!
Friday, April 10, 2026
AI is the surest way to global catastrophe humanity has so far invented!
From Anderson, J., & Rainie, L. (2026). Building a
human resilience infrastructure for the AI age. Imagining the Digital Future
Center, Elon University. Pages 67-68
‘AI is
the surest way to a global catastrophe humanity has so far invented. ... Can we
create a new movement for moral and ethical considerations before the AI
hurricane destroys half of humanity?’
Srinivasan
Ramani, an Internet Hall of Fame member, previously research director at HP
Labs India and professor at the International Institute of Information
Technology in Bangalore, wrote: “I confess to being an AI aficionado – I have
been one since 1964. My education and research experience make me a critical
observer, not a blind fan. I have been a daily user of the Microsoft Copilot
for more than a year. It applies semantic dimensions to understand what a user
is talking about and has the fluency to make occasional flattering remarks,
showing off a form of personality! Its access to resources encompassing a vast
swath of human knowledge – including history, science, arts, medicine and
technology – makes it a powerful collaborator at work. Its problem-solving
abilities include the capability to implement all published algorithms,
heuristics and approximate methods while also staying aware of even today’s
news. Copilot can now do the bulk of the routine work that researchers and
writers do. It surely has increased my productivity and helped me troubleshoot
problems in my daily life.
However, I
believe that AI is the surest way to global catastrophe that humanity has
invented to this point. We are not a mature society globally, and yet we have
acquired extremely dangerous weapons. When people are running away from a city
under bombing, rarely do they think of their neighbours. So, I doubt that
humanity can come together to agree on effective international cooperation
against malevolent AI.”
‘I have hopes that a new movement could create a new morality to help us
confront the challenges. ... The rarity or uniqueness of anything like the
human civilization in all the observable universe could inspire many people to
join the proposed movement. Humanity would be most un-intelligent if it creates
such a unique civilization and then fails to save it from destruction.‘
“We have no
warning system for specific dangers and we have no treaties like the ones that
confronted mutually assured destruction by nuclear weapons in the late 20th
Century. Safeguards and treaties against runaway AI may come in 10 years, but
that may be too late.
Innovative
technologies for use in intercontinental navigation in the 15th century onward
made popular scientific theories such as the Copernican Heliocentric theory and
threatened formal religion. We should not underestimate a similar threat to
religious beliefs being the result of developments in AI.
The biggest
threat is to our economic and social structures.
The concept
of jobs as the mechanism for providing an income and survival is under threat.
The mechanism of taxing individuals’ income to provide the bulk of government
expenditure is also under threat. Do all human beings have an inherent right to
incomes irrespective of their employment? Does this right cover all regions of
the Earth, or is it confined to residents of economically advanced nations?
This question threatens our political foundations.
Traditional
pedagogies force students to learn a lot of information and knowledge just in
case they may need it during their lives. AI has trashed these pedagogies, by
giving information and knowledge on demand. The pace of change in most fields
of human endeavour make it meaningless to restrict learning to the first
quarter of one’s life. New pedagogies need to be evolved to teach all people to
live in a turbocharged world in which they must learn to change and adapt all
their lives.”
“I think
like an engineer, clinging to hope at the worst of times. I will be thinking of
solutions to problems till my last breath. So, let me describe my hopes.
The power of
compounded earnings makes me believe that poverty may not be as big a threat as
it has been in the past. The problem is a moral one. Do most people recognize
that the speed of social and economic change is already extremely high? Can we
create a new movement for moral and ethical considerations before the AI
hurricane destroys half of humanity?
I have hopes
that a new movement could create a new morality to help us confront the
challenges. I take hope from the green parties which have had a degree of
success in earning public support to face the threat to sustainability of human
life on Earth. The rarity or uniqueness of anything like the human civilization
in all the observable universe could inspire many people to join the proposed
movement.
Humanity
would be most un-intelligent if it creates such a unique civilization and then
fails to save it from destruction.”
Srinivasan
Ramani
Retd. Professor, IIIT Bangalore
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