AI Everywhere

The Man from Madras Musings is told that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now the answer to everything. From the mundane to the esoteric, MMM sees people now using AI. It would appear that in the craze for using AI, natural I has been pigeonholed. While the world worries over job losses owing to AI, MMM wonders whether there ought to be concerns for the way intelligence itself has been rendered irrelevant and therefore given the pink slip.

Flawless Letters, Bruised Ego

It is of course not as though AI is all bad. MMM notices people who were terrible in written communication have suddenly begun to display great epistolary skills. Letters today, by which MMM means emails, appear as what can only be termed as flowery messages and flawless at that. MMM who always prided himself on his communication skills is now left with an inferiority complex. His sole talent has been sacrificed to technology.

A Writer’s Block Like No Other

Faced therefore with the task of writing yet another column for the good old magazine MMM suddenly found himself unable to think. What is it that he could take up that would be fresh, humorous, not be considered elitist, and not give offense to any section of society that happened to read the column? And he found he did not have an answer. Could he have come to the end of fresh ideas?

Tempted to Ask AI

Should he therefore ask AI if it had something to suggest on what could be written for the column? But before that MMM decided to once run through his mind some of the common topics that have proven to be everlasting as far as Chennai is concerned.

Old Topics, No New Angle

There is the matter of the airport. It remains as much an apology for a facility of its kind as it was a few years ago. But MMM has already written enough and more about it and so what is it that could be said which was new?

Then there is the matter of the roads. MMM has written so many reams about it that he does not have the energy to take up writing about it once again. Not that it has made any difference for the roads are just as bad as before.

Posters, Convoys, and Sacred Spaces

Could he write about posters being pasted on walls? No, because that too as a topic has been done to death. What about the chief minister’s convoy blocking traffic every morning in front of MMM’s residence? No, that too has been written about quite often. And if MMM persisted in writing about it there was every danger of a group of people coming and blocking his residence itself, leave alone the road in front of it.

Could he write about the behaviour of people at religious shrines? No no! For that would mean riots and we do not want all that trouble, do we?

The Cry of Defeat

And therefore, MMM seems to have run the full gamut of what he could write about Madras that is Chennai. The cry goes around that MMM has lost it.

Turning to AI After All

And so, MMM decided that he would surrender his soul to AI. He compiled a set of questions, threw in some of the topics that had already been covered by MMM in his columns and then asked as to what is it that he could write about.

The Punchline

Believe it or not, he got the following options as his answer the airport, the condition of the roads, posters on the walls, religious behaviour, and traffic in Chennai city! MMM threw up his hands in frustration and then realized, wait a minute, AI had given him 600 words after all.

This article appeared in Madras Musings-https://madrasmusings.com/vol-35-no-15/short-n-snappy-233/

My book, Chennai, A Biography can be ordered-http://- https://sriramv.com/2021/12/27/how-to-buy-autographed-copies-of-chennai-a-biography-from-outstation/