TimesofIndia.com in Dharamshala: On the eve of IPL 2026 Qualifier 1 against Gujarat Titans (GT), the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) captain Rajat Patidar He said that he wants to change a perception about him that he likes to play spinners; Instead, he believes his game is more suited to fast bowlers.He had said, “This year I have dominated fast bowlers more. There is a perception about me that I play spinners better. But if anyone asks me, I always say that I like fast bowlers.” And the numbers don’t lie. Patidar has hit 41 sixes in this year’s IPL, 27 of which have been against fast bowlers. He has scored 486 runs in 14 matches, but the statistics do not fully reflect the impact he has made. Batting at number 4, he has scored five half-centuries and scored runs at a strike rate of 196.76.On Tuesday evening, before the picturesque HPCA Stadium in Dharamshala lit up with a laser show, it was Patidar who set the stage on fire. The 32-year-old player performed one of the most brilliant innings of the season, scoring a brilliant 93 runs in 33 balls. It was an innings built on timing and relentless intent. He hit nine sky-high sixes, seven of which were against fast bowlers. Among them, Kagiso Rabada had an extraordinary hit in the seventh over. The right-handed batsman made a comeback and easily lofted a good length delivery over cover for a maximum. It was a stroke that perfectly reflected the confidence and authority with which he batted. Patidar’s innings did not explode immediately. He worked his way through the start with measured singles and calm accumulation, rotating the strike while allowing the innings to settle. At that time, RCB had lost two set batsmen in quick succession in the form of Devdutt Padikkal and Virat Kohli. Patidar’s approach was one of patience rather than immediate aggression.His first significant statement came in the 11th over when Jason Holder dropped short and Patidar immediately shifted his weight onto the backfoot and pulled the ball deep into the stands over mid-wicket. This shot not only completed RCB’s century but also reduced the pressure that was building.There were also moments of good fortune. In the 12th over, against Prasidh Krishna, a big shot attempt took an inside edge which went past Jos Buttler, resulting in a bye. Soon after, Patidar survived a major scare when a leading edge flew over the wicketkeeper’s head and fell safely among the gathered fielders. In the same over, a pull shot almost ended his innings but Rabada gave a direct chance in the deep.

Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Rajat Patidar plays a shot during the Indian Premier League 2026 Qualifier 1 match against Gujarat Titans at the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association Stadium in Dharamshala on Tuesday. (ANI)

Those moments proved costly for GT.Patidar started scoring runs rapidly against Kulwant Khejroliya in the 15th over. An ill-timed stroke reached the ropes, before he used the angle of the delivery brilliantly to hit a stylish six over long leg. He finished the over by clearing the ropes again and then finding the boundary, collecting 28 runs in a pace-change that strongly turned the contest.The spinners also did not get any relief.Rashid Khan, usually one of the toughest bowlers to dominate, became Patidar’s next target. A slightly shorter delivery disappeared over long-on, dancing with the spin and hitting it with complete freedom, before Patidar finished the over with a brilliant inside-out six over cover.The attack against Rabada intensified. Patidar brought up a blistering half-century off just 21 balls with a ferocious pull over deep midwicket and then immediately followed it up with that brilliant back-foot drive over cover. Some batsmen attempt this type of stroke against fast pace; Even fewer execute it so cleanly.

Till this situation, Patidar looked invincible.The next loss was to Mohammed Siraj. A wide full toss was clipped over backward point for six runs, before another over-pitched delivery was launched for four runs. Patidar had entered a phase where almost every scoring opportunity became a boundary.In the last over of RCB’s innings, Prasidh Krishna felt the full force of Patidar’s final attack. A fulltoss on the hips went missing over backward square leg for six. Another powerful hit straight at the bowler took him into the nineties.Patidar almost single-handedly changed the momentum of the innings. He survived the pressure, rode his luck and then destroyed both pace and spin with equal authority. His 93 was more than just a collection of runs; This was a display of fearless batting.

Glenn Phillips (screengrab)

New Delhi: Royal Challengers Bengaluru completely defeated Gujarat Titans in IPL 2026 Qualifier 1, winning by 92 runs after posting a massive score of 254/5. Rajat Patidar He played a brilliant inning of 93 unbeaten runs with the help of nine sixes and five fours in just 33 balls. Virat Kohli And Krunal Pandya also scored 43 runs as the GT bowlers struggled badly under pressure.Gujarat’s chase never really materialized as their top order collapsed early on. Shubman Gill, Sai Sudarshan and Jos Buttler were all out cheaply, leaving the team with a lot to do. Ultimately GT was out for 162 runs.Gujarat Titans batting after the match glen phillips Attended the press conference despite not being part of the playing eleven. During the conversation, a reporter asked whether GT had mentally given up after seeing RCB score 254. This question apparently troubled Phillips, who strongly rejected the suggestion.“It’s a silly question. It’s a really silly question. No one goes out there waiting to be like, ‘Oh, you know what? We’ll just drop it.’ Why would we do this as professional cricketers? It’s a terrible question,” he told reporters.“We went out there, we did everything. Unfortunately, when you’re trying to chase 250, everything has to be perfect. And we went out there to try to do everything right, and obviously that didn’t happen.”Phillips said that chasing such a big score always creates pressure and every small mistake becomes costly.Phillips acknowledged that scoreboard pressure played a large role in the collapse but insisted that the team gave its all on the field.“There’s huge scoreboard pressure when you’re trying to chase 250. And, you know, very few teams have done that,” he said.

Pope Leo XIV has referenced one of the Bible’s most famous stories, the Tower of Babel, when warning about the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. In recent comments about AI ethics and global technological power, the pontiff compared the modern AI race to the ancient Biblical story of humanity attempting to build towers that reach to the heavens. The purpose of the comparison was to warn against uncontrolled ambition, concentration of power, and the pursuit of technological progress without moral responsibility. By referencing Babel, Pope Leo XIV highlighted concerns that artificial intelligence could deepen confusion, inequality and social division if developed without ethical boundaries and human oversight.

What is the Tower of Babel?

The Tower of Babel is a story from the Book of Genesis in the Bible. According to the legend, humanity once shared a single language and began building a city and a tower in the land of Shinar, often associated with ancient Mesopotamia. The builders said that they wanted to make a name for themselves and build a tower whose top would reach heaven.In the story, God confuses the language of the people so that they cannot understand each other, and creation stops. People are then scattered throughout the earth, and the place is called Babel, which the Biblical text associates with the confusion of human language. The story has traditionally been interpreted as a warning about human pride, ambition, and the limits of human power.

Why did Pope Leo XIV use the Babel comparison?

Pope Leo XIV used the Tower of Babel as a symbolic warning about the direction of modern technology, especially artificial intelligence. His comments focused on fears that AI could become a tool of excessive control and centralized power if governments and technology companies pursue innovation without ethical safeguards.The Pope suggested that, like the builders of Babel, modern society risks believing that it can overcome all limitations through technological progress alone. He warned that AI systems designed without accountability could undermine the truth, increase misinformation and diminish human individuality by treating people as data rather than human beings.The comparison also reflected concerns about global reliance on a small number of powerful AI developers. According to the Pope’s broader message, technology should serve humanity rather than dominate it.Over the centuries, the Tower of Babel has become an enduring symbol of failed human ambition, communication breakdowns, and the dangers of achieving power without knowledge. Pope Leo XIV’s AI warning shows how the ancient story is being used to explain modern global challenges.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is consulting his loyalists in Bengaluru after crucial Delhi talks on possible leadership change.

New Delhi: After over six hours of intense discussions with the Congress leadership, including Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, KC Venugopal in Delhi, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is scheduled to meet his loyal ministers and MLAs in Bengaluru on Wednesday, escalating fresh speculation over leadership change in Karnataka.The Congress high command is understood to have proposed a negotiated transition plan under which Siddaramaiah could be catapulted into national politics as a Rajya Sabha member and in a bigger organizational role. The deliberations followed marathon meetings of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, KC Venugopal and Karnataka in-charge Randeep Surjewala on Tuesday with Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar amid growing talk of a possible cabinet reshuffle.While the Congress officially denied that leadership change was discussed, party insiders indicated that the issue dominated the deliberations as the high command sought a formula that would ensure a smooth transition without creating factional unrest.Siddaramaiah is understood to have told the leadership that he has no ambitions in national politics, but Rahul is said to have stressed that the Congress wanted his experience and OBC reach at the national level. Sources said Siddaramaiah sought time to consult his loyalists before taking a final decision.Sources said that during the one-on-one meeting, Rahul Gandhi asked the experienced leader to consider taking responsibilities at the national level and to respond within a week.The latest development is being seen as a big boost for Shivakumar, who has consistently said that a rotational chief minister system was discussed when the Congress formed the government after its victory in the 2023 assembly elections. Shivakumar’s supporters argue that depriving him of the top post following his role in rebuilding the party organization could damage the morale of the Congress’s Vokkaliga support base and cadre.Also, given his strong influence among backward classes, minorities and Dalits through the Ahinda social alliance and government guarantee schemes, Congress leaders are wary of destabilizing the Siddaramaiah camp.Party insiders said the leadership is keen to avoid a Rajasthan-like factional crisis and hence is insisting on a consensus-based change in leadership rather than confrontation.The uncertainty has left ministers and cabinet contenders in a dilemma, with many MLAs lobbying for a cabinet reshuffle along with the leadership issue. There are currently three cabinet posts vacant in the Congress, and leaders from both camps are closely watching the next round of consultations for clues on the final decision of the high command.

Twitch streamer Hassanabi criticized Fox News after the network referenced the 2025 “Collargate” controversy involving his dog Kaia during a segment about his federal subpoena related to his trip to Cuba. Responding to the stream, Hasan accused the network of employing “literal stalkers” and called its coverage a “stalker operation.” He argued that the evidence had already refuted the key allegations and expressed disappointment when the controversy resurfaced months later.

Hassan Pikar found himself in the headlines again this week when a Fox News segment reignited the controversy that many viewers had previously written off from public discussion. The popular Twitch streamer reacted live to comments made during a broadcast that referenced allegations involving his dog, Kaya, while discussing an unrelated federal subpoena linked to his March 2026 trip to Cuba.The moment quickly gained popularity online. What appeared to be a passing comment during the segment turned into a sharp response from Hassanabi, who accused the network of focusing on a controversy that he believes has already been addressed.

Hassanabi responds after Fox News references dog collar controversy

During a recent livestream, Hasan watched a Fox News clip in which a reporter discussed his legal situation and then unexpectedly mentioned concerns about the so-called “Collargate” controversy. This comment appeared to take the dreamer by surprise.Responding to the segment, Hasan argued that mainstream outlets face stricter standards than social media users when discussing sensitive allegations.“They can’t even say it… because they’re worried about being sued. Isn’t that ridiculous? Fox News is trying to entertain it, but they can’t, like, completely say it because random… people chirping on the Internet, obviously, don’t have the same fear. But when you’re a mainstream media outlet, there’s a level of editorial control; so they can only point it out, they can’t completely lean into it. You know?”The streamer’s frustration grew when he saw references to his dog appear in the segment. He then said one of the most talked about lines in broadcast reaction.(A Fox News reporter says, ‘I made sure we had a picture of Kaia…’) This is crazy, brother! This is a Fox News Sunday program! What do you mean?! I literally have stalkers on the payroll, man!”

Hassanabi accuses Fox News of running a “stalker operation”

As the discussion continued, Hassan turned his attention to the excessive surveillance of his content and personal life. He refuted claims that Kaya spent all day sitting on his back during watercourses and argued that publicly available evidence already refutes that narrative.“Brother, your own stalker operation literally…destroyed the meta. Not only did it prove it’s a…vibration collar, but it also proved she goes on long walks all day! So, obviously, she…isn’t sitting behind me all day; she’s literally…out in pictures! I know, it doesn’t matter. None of that…matters. But Jesus Christ, dude! This is so weird!”The latest round comes amid ongoing tensions between Hassanabi and conservative media outlets. Meanwhile, the discussion has spread across streaming communities, and fellow creators and viewers continue to debate both the controversy and the media attention it has received.

Bengaluru/New Delhi: The Congress leadership is eyeing a change of power in Karnataka amid indications that CM Siddaramaiah has been offered a respectable rehabilitation, possibly including a Rajya Sabha seat, as part of a smooth leadership transition in the state.On a day when Siddaramaiah and his deputy and contender for his post DK Shivakumar met the Congress leadership of Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, KC Venugopal and state in-charge Randeep Surjewala for six hours, Rahul is understood to have asked Siddaramaiah during the one-on-one meeting to consider playing a national role in the party. They have been asked to reply within a week.Venugopal – speaking to reporters along with the CM and Deputy CM – dismissed talk of discussions about leadership change as “speculation”, and said the meetings were limited to the upcoming RS and Legislative Council elections. Party insiders said Siddaramaiah told Rahul that he had no ambition to enter national politics, but Rahul insisted that he wanted experienced OBC leaders in his team to strengthen the Congress nationally. Rahul had so far resisted the idea of ​​replacing Siddaramaiah, even as others among top party leaders believed a change of leadership could help the Congress.Also read: Congress says no tussle between Siddaramaiah, DKS for Karnataka CM postParty insiders said Siddaramaiah sought time to consult his loyalists before taking the decision. During the discussion, he is understood to have indicated that he would rather step down than face Rahul, who had supported him for the CM post twice in his career despite being seen as an outsider within the Congress. Rahul’s rethink marks the moment Shivakumar had been waiting for for the last six months. He had always said that he was promised a rotational tenure at the time of formation of the government. When Congress won the state elections in 2023 by defeating BJP, Shivakumar was the party chief.Sources said there were discussions in Siddaramaiah’s camp on whether he should register his protest by refusing to resign or by quitting the post and rejecting any national role.If Siddaramaiah agrees to move to the Rajya Sabha, it could lead to a change in the post of Leader of the Opposition, which is currently held by Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge. Rahul’s team also discussed giving place to Sidda’s son in the cabinet. The Congress president is due to get another Rajya Sabha term next month, and many consider Siddaramaiah a strong possibility as leader of the opposition to help the Congress with the OBC votebase.According to sources, Rahul’s team also discussed a possible cabinet berth for Siddaramaiah’s son Yathindra as part of the talks.The possibility of shifting the 77-year-old leader to the Rajya Sabha has gained momentum ahead of the elections for four Upper House seats from Karnataka in June. Congress is confident of winning at least three seats.It remains to be seen whether the CM tacitly agrees to Shivakumar replacing him or puts up resistance which could open the way for a third candidate as a compromise. The Siddaramaiah camp said he was still the overwhelming choice of the legislature party and submitted a list of 108 signatures to underline his superiority.After the AICC deliberations, Siddaramaiah met loyal ministers and MLAs at the Delhi residence of his senior minister KG George. He is expected to hold another round of consultations in Bengaluru on Wednesday before deciding his future course of action.Also read: Karnataka ministers and candidates confused after talks in DelhiA senior leader pointed out that a “cabinet reshuffle” in the state, as demanded by Siddaramaiah, was not discussed in AICC meetings – indicating that the CM’s retention was not guaranteed.Party insiders said that the Congress leadership wanted to avoid a “Rajasthan-like crisis”, and hence, preferred a negotiated change rather than a tense resolution.Congress insiders have recently argued that any change will happen only with Siddaramaiah’s consent, as the party takes into account his seniority as well as the fact that he is a senior OBC leader whose social engineering gives political leverage to the party. A senior state leader said the party would have to consider the possible consequences of ousting Siddaramaiah, whose Kuruba community has a statewide presence and has the potential to damage the Congress.

Kalyani/Kolkata: Six Trinamool Congress MLAs and four-time MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar on Tuesday attended an administrative meeting of Bengal CM Suvendu Adhikari, a clear act of defiance as the post-poll losses in the party show no signs of stopping. The development came after TMC Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Shekhar Roy made an incoherent comment on the change of power in the state when the BJP came to power on May 4: “Ahead of the Eid of May, the people of West Bengal endured an intolerable, chaotic situation,” Roy posted on Instagram. The turmoil continued later as two TMC MLAs – Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha – held a closed-door “courtesy” meeting in the chamber of BJP Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose. The open defiance and public criticism comes in the wake of a series of resignations across Bengal – 127 TMC councilors from 11 civic bodies have resigned so far and party boards in six municipalities have been dissolved. However, what attracted the most attention on Tuesday was Ghosh Dastidar’s attendance at the CM’s meeting in Kalyani, Nadia, near Kolkata. Ghosh Dastidar, who was recently removed from the post of party chief whip in the Lok Sabha, said, “Administration is for everyone, it is not a party programme.” He also blamed the leadership’s dependence on poll consultant I-PAC for TMC’s defeat. The officer accepted Ghosh Dastidar’s gesture. “When we were in the opposition, we were never invited to administrative meetings. We decided that MLAs should be invited and the Barasat MP responded positively,” the official said. TMC MLAs present at the meeting included Anisur Rehman, Burhan-ul-Mukhuddin, Beena Mandal, Surjit Mitra, Usharani Mandal and Abdul Mateen. All said they were merely attending an administrative event. The meeting covered 57 assembly constituencies, 50 of which were won by the BJP. Sensing the change, TMC chief and former CM Mamata Banerjee has met seniors several times recently. On Tuesday, TMC’s Tarak Singh, a member of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, refused to attend the meeting called by him.

The fictional misanthrope Dr. House often joked that if one could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people. Of course, the expert had made these comments before donald trump Became President, an event so devastating that it forced the world’s most openly religious man to act as a voice of reason.With the democratic powers of his home country electing the presidential version of Pope Alexander VI, a man whose foreign policy is based on nepotistic self-aggrandizement, the responsibility of providing moral guidance to his countrymen and much of the WENA world has fallen to the first American Pope. And now, like every manager in every corporate office, he too is talking about Artificial Intelligence. Thankfully, this is not the case with the enthusiasm of corporate heads who think AI can replace all kinds of redundant workers, so the only ones making money are CEOs and shareholders.In his first encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, or Magnificent Humanity, the Pope warned about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence, comparing it to the Tower of Babel and saying: “Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, faces today a critical choice: either build a new Tower of Babel or build the city in which God and humanity live together.”But what exactly is the Tower of Babel? What is an encyclopedia? Why is the Pope talking about Artificial Intelligence? And can he be a voice of reason against the largely atheist technocrats who can find Christ when it suits their narrative? And why are the sons of Abraham worried about deus ex machina? For those who live under a rock, or are more bothered by cockroaches or clubs, here’s a little primer.

The Tower of Babel Story

Most people who haven’t read the Bible from cover to cover may have first heard the term Tower of Babel in In one of the film’s more memorable scenes, Apocalypse hijacks the world’s nuclear arsenals and launches them into space before thundering: “You can shoot your arrows from the Tower of Babel, but you can never attack God!”The pulpy line takes an old religious myth and gives it a modern twist: the man points missiles skyward.

The Tower of Babel is a fictional Biblical allegory, what scholars call an etiological myth, in this case a story that explains why humanity speaks so many different languages. It appears in Genesis shortly after the story of Noah’s flood, when humanity is still imagined as a single people with one language. They settle in the land of Shinar and decide to build a city and a tower “whose top can reach the heavens” and which can ward off any floods. This is too much for an Abrahamic God who can’t stop his subjects from uniting against him, so he sends a gust of wind that makes the various workers unable to communicate with each other because, before Google Translate, when there is no common language, there is no way for people to work together.And then there’s the most famous name in that particular story: Nimrod, Noah’s great-grandson. Later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions transformed Nimrod into a rebel-king who dared to challenge God and shot arrows into the sky to kill him. In some versions, the arrows return covered in blood, giving Nimrod the illusion that he has wounded the god.Reading: Why did Trump TACOed against the Pope? But, as Peter T Chataway writes in Patheos, the action of Apocalypse twists the familiar legend. Nimrod aims his arrows at God, while Apocalypse aims them at Heaven because he is a “false god”. And today, it is Pope Leo who in his new encyclical is comparing AI to the new Tower of Babel, with humans playing the role of God.This is a myth found in all civilizations, including the Hindu Shatapatha Brahmana, which describes the asuras building a huge fire altar of bricks in order to reach heaven before being betrayed by Indra. This story also finds its place in children’s stories along with Jack and the Beanstalk.This idea is found in all civilizations, reflecting unbridled human ambition, such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost, where the confusion of human language causes laughter in heaven, or Franz Kafka’s short story Das Stadtwappen, where the builder of Babel is surrounded by bureaucracy. Even in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a “Babel fish” is a device that can be implanted in one’s ear to translate any extraterrestrial speech.

Why did Pope Leo call AI the new ‘Tower of Babel’?

Now, before anyone asks, an encyclical is a papal policy document, which Rome still brings up when it wants to convince the world that the opinions of the Roman Catholic Church matter. This is an extremely long Substack post generally addressed to Catholics and “people of good will.” Pope Leo’s first encyclical is titled Magnifica Humanitas, or Magnificent Humanity, and is approximately 42,300 words long, which suggests that the Vatican has also discovered that AI discourse cannot be contained in a thread, and that the document was not written or edited by ChatGPT. The lack of “it wasn’t X, it was Y” statements suggests it probably wasn’t.The document was formally signed on 15 May, the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII’s great intervention during the Industrial Revolution. Leo first wrote when machines were replacing labour. Leo XIV is writing when machines are changing the meaning of labor and perhaps the human condition.

Digital Papyrus was released with Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, a self-named “good” AI company, resigning before his system was used to bomb people. As The New York Times noted, Leo has been talking about AI since the beginning of his papacy, warning cardinals that the Church must address the risks posed by technology to “human dignity, justice and labor.”Leo outlines the conflict between building a new Tower of Babel and building a city in which God and humanity can live together. Presenting Tower of Babel as a beta product launch, he argued that it was “conceived without reference to God”, “eliminated diversity”, and chose “homogenization over communion”.Pope is not entirely anti-AI, saying that it can “heal, connect, educate and protect”, but warns that the technology is “never neutral” because it regresses to those who “devise, finance, regulate and use it”. This sounds similar to the dichotomy previously found in AI, when our choice was between MechaHitler, the Grok bot that threatened users with graphic harm, or Black George Washington, where Gemini couldn’t imagine a world where anyone was white or male.Babel syndrome, Leo warns, is “the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak” and resides in the arrogance that “a single language – even a digital language – can translate everything, including the mystery of the individual, into data and display”.In his own way, the Pope is reminding people that they are more than the culmination of stray patterns that can be replicated by a machine. That is why Leo writes that Babel highlights the danger of any grand project that “sacrifices human dignity for the sake of efficiency and aspires to reach heaven without God’s blessing”. The old builders used brick and bitumen. The newcomers talk about chips, clouds, capital and the kind of missionary language usually reserved for people handing out leaflets at traffic lights. The promise is the same: one language, one system, one tower, one future, a small priesthood that will decide what counts as progress.And if that sounds too dramatic, Leo makes the warning clear elsewhere: “If, however, power grows while hearts dry up and human bonds break, then we are facing a new form of Babel – a creation that is grand, yet fundamentally inhumane.”Which is probably the Vatican’s way of saying it most: When God is gone from your heart, there is no point searching for God in heaven or trying to create Him out of thin air.

Abrahamic God vs. Deus Ex Machina – Old God vs. New

The term Deus Ex Makina is Latin for “God from the Machine”, usually used as a plot device when a character comes out of nowhere to save the day, e.g. Salman Khan In Pathan. In The Matrix universe, this term meets its logical conclusion, where Neo offers an olive branch to the literal Deus Ex Machina, the god of machines.Ergo, it is not particularly difficult to understand why the idea of ​​AGI, or a literal deus ex machina, is particularly troubling to the organized Abrahamic faiths, which all argue in their own way: You shall have no other gods before me.

“You shall have no other gods before me” is the basic operating system of all three major Abrahamic religions. This same sentiment is repeated in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and there are different terms to describe its violations: idolatry, shirk, apostasy, and more. But perhaps the problem goes beyond God’s finding an Abrahamic alternative. It lies in creating a form of technology that makes us less human, no matter who we worship, or who we worship.Silicon Valley, our modern-day kingdom of kings, has always had the strangest relationship with theology, claiming to be secular, rational and data-driven while borrowing from the vocabulary of religious texts where the founders convince themselves that they are on a mission from God.As The New York Times notes, the Messiah series goes back decades. In an old joke, a programmer asks a computer, “Is there a God?” The computer replies: “Right now.”AI has simply upgraded that old sermon from a counterculture slogan to a trillion-dollar infrastructure where the keys to the kingdoms of heaven are such tormented creatures. Big Tech’s brothers keep human life close to the battery. They constantly devalue other human beings. They don’t think twice before firing thousands of people. They consider fellow humans as little more than guinea pigs. And many of them changed their ideology overnight to persuade, appease, and even worship the government of the day, as seen in the remarkable alacrity with which Big Tech abandoned vigilance as soon as Donald Trump won.Reading: Does Sam Altman think of humans as batteries? What can we expect from such stricken people? The problem is not chatbots writing bad poems or models hallucinating quotes, but the Babel instinct, where the world is imagined as a dystopian John Lennon song: one language, one system, one aristocracy, one idea of ​​progress, and the belief that humanity is nothing more than a series of data, performance, and predictions. The Vatican, for all its troubles, understands one thing that Silicon Valley has conveniently forgotten: False gods always demand sacrifices. And if the Singularity does come, that promised moment when man and machine merge, we wouldn’t want to see the kind of abomination we find on our hands.

There’s an interesting short story that shows what might have happened. In Arthur C Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God, monks painstakingly write down every name of God, which they believe number nine billion. It would take them 15,000 years to write down the names by hand, so they hire two computer experts who install a machine that can print out every name, and do so in 100 days. As soon as the last name was printed, they noticed that from above, without any fuss, the stars began to disappear, signaling the end of the universe. Hopefully, this will not be the fate of mankind when AGI is born.

New Delhi: Following PM Modi’s announcement in last year’s Independence Day speech, the government on Monday constituted a high-level committee to scientifically examine the nature, causes and impact of demographic changes across the country, including illegal immigration as well as abnormal population shifts at the level of religious and social communities, and recommend policy, administrative and legal framework to address the problem in a time-bound manner.The High Level Committee on Demographic Change (HLCDC), headed by retired Supreme Court judge Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar, has been formed amid an intensified campaign by the BJP governments in Assam, West Bengal and other states to curb illegal immigration, which they see as a conspiracy to bring about demographic change and drive out all infiltrators.Announcing the panel on Tuesday, Shah said on X, “Unnatural demographic changes caused by illegal immigration and other factors are a serious challenge to the present and future of any country… This is not only linked to our sovereignty, but also to national security, law and order, profound changes in the social structure and protection of tribal groups.” The panel was given one year to submit the final report. This follows the recent particularly intensive revision of voter lists by the Election Commission, including in the border state of Bengal, which led to the deletion of lakhs of ‘absentee’ and ‘other’ voters – their details are already in the public domain.The HLCDC – tasked with recommending a permanent operational system for legal, fair and timely identification, detention and deportation of illegal immigrants in the country – comes at a time when the BJP is in power in Assam, Tripura and Bengal.Sharing that Census Commissioner Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan, retired IAS officer Durga Shankar Mishra, former IPS officer Balaji Srivastava and economist Shamika Ravi will be members of the committee, Shah said it will “comprehensively assess the demographic changes occurring across India due to illegal immigration and other unnatural causes, analyze the patterns of abnormal population shifts at the level of religious and social communities and present a planned and time-bound solution for the same.” Will do”.The panel, which will be under the Home Ministry), has been given one year to submit its final report.Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has launched an aggressive campaign against the infiltrators and publicly vowed to push them back into Bangladesh. The newly elected BJP government in Bengal has got into work fast, with CM Suvendu Adhikari deciding to provide land to complete the fencing work on the border with Bangladesh.Informing the panel, the MHA said some areas are witnessing demographic changes that are not attributable to normal fertility or mortality trends but are emerging due to “external abnormal factors such as illegal immigration, irregular population dynamics and administrative laxity”.