Automation running amuck

 I was alarmed when most of the warning lights came up on my Subaru Forester one fine day a few weeks ago. One of them was indicating a malfunction of “Eye Sight” , a vision system that keeps car in the lane and maintains distance from the car in front. Especially disturbing was the sign that we need to check the engine. In addition, among others, there was an "S" blinking in and out, where "S" is the sports mode of driving.

I checked the manual to see what was going on. That was totally futile because nowhere in the manual it said what the Christmas Tree of lights (my name for multiple lights coming on and blinking) meant. When we tried Google and YouTube, there were all types of suggestions: It is the engine, it is the transmission, it is the Vehicle Dynamic System, it is the battery, it is water in the gas. In short, totally confusing answers, written by equally frustrated customers.

 

So, I took the car to the dealer. They hooked it up and came up with diagnostic....it was the coolant bypass valve failure, which, if not attended, can lead to the engine overheating. They fixed it in a few hours and, better still, it was covered under warranty.

 

My question: How can so many warning lights come up for a coolant bypass valve failure? I can see check the engine light but all the rest? Probably, the engineers that designed the system wanted a way to communicate to me that something was wrong, but to use the “Christmas light” approach? 

 

In short, the modern cars have become so complicated that it is impossible, even for an engineer, to figure out their bizarre behaviors.

 

This is not the only case where automation has run amuck. The very same day I had the car incidence, I had to battle the sprinkler system in our backyard. 

 

The old controller was replaced by a system called Rachio which operates through my iPhone, using the home’s Wi-Fi system. The problem was that our Internet service provider had issues and so we had periodic Internet blackouts. That made our dear Rachio get disoriented and disconnected. The problem persisted even after the Internet service was restored.

 

Worse, one of the sprinklers sprung a leak and I wanted to shut the system off. Without Wi-Fi connection, Rachio will not obey. I had to find the shut off valve and manually disconnect the system.

 

Meanwhile, the Rachio controller had multiple lights blinking. I tried to decipher the meaning of blinking lights and reconnect Rachio. That just did not work. Like an endless loop, the system changed its blinking light sequence but came back to the original set. I was going to call Rachio for assistance but then, magically, the system started working.

 

After giving away the simplicity for controlling sprinklers to a Wi-Fi run automated system, I said “hell no” when our new microwave and gas stove (from LG) asked to be connected to Wi-Fi. 

 

Enough is enough. Especially for a senior citizen. 

 

 

 

On automation and redundancies

 Three events made me think about the topic of automation and redundancies. First one was collision of a containership with a vital bridge in Baltimore a few months ago. The second, the crash of an Air France flight (AF447) in Atlantic a few years ago, and the third, the massive global impact of a glitch in a Microsoft software that happened just a few days ago. 

 

The container ship apparently had several power outages as it left the port. Without power, it was not possible to steer the ship and the result was catastrophic. My question is what was there no redundancy bult in the system, so if one thing fails another takes over? That’s what make airplanes so safe.

 

Then there was a curious case of the crash of Air France flight AF477. This modern Airbus A330 was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. As the airplane entered a thunderstorm, its air speed indicator froze and the autopilot stopped working, as well as a fly by wire system which corrects pilot’s errors. When automation failed, the pilots made mistakes and the airplane entered a stall. One major reason was these pilots were trained for using fail-safe systems all the time and their experience in manually operating an aircraft was limited, particularly at high altitudes. 

 

In an excellent Podcast of the event (“Cautionary Tales”) Tim Hartford mentions experiments in which training under full automation led to poor responses for situations where it failed. Almost like it is better to train using automation that is not guaranteed to work always. The humans then know what to do in case of failure.

 

Finally, something that happened ta few days ago….it seems that an error in the Cybersecurity code that Microsoft asked people to use resulted in a massive meltdown in all types of sectors: aviation, banking, and hospitals. This brings forth another issue… how can we give so much power to one company or one software? Here too, there was a human override possible but that did not work well. Perhaps people were not used to manually doing things that were automated. 

 

Automation is inevitable, but these examples show that (1) make sure there are redundancies built in, (2) make sure that humans are trained to take over if automated system fails (i.e., they are trained on non-foolproof systems), (3) do not let one company, system, person become the ruler of the automation game across sectors.

 

Early in my professional career I used to do quantitative risk analysis. There were tools available even then, like Fault Tree Analysis, that would have caught some of these issues before they resulted in tragedies. I am sure there are more sophisticated tools available now then at that time So, why were they not used?

 

Finally, as Tim Hartford mentions, in the coming wave of AI, humans are going to become even more reliant on AI based automation. 

Will that reduce even further the chances of humans learning the basics of how to manual take over if automation fails? 

They called us exceptional

 I just finished reading a book that chronicles the experience of a woman with Indian parents growing up in this country. Titled “They called us exceptional: and other lies that raised us” by Prachi Gupta, it is an interesting read, though a bit too dense and long. It is also a depressing story that ends with her family completely falling apart. 

 

The book is especially relevant to us as we are immigrants from India and raised two kids in this country. I was trying to see how our story matches that of Prachi’s and where it does not, what could be the reasons.

 

In one important way it does not match is in terms of what has happened to our family vs. Prachi’s. We are an intact family that lives happily in California. Nothing as dramatic as what happened to the Prachi’s in the book. It could be just good luck or there may be reasons. 

 

The main reason for Prachi’s family falling apart is her father, who was authoritarian with old fashioned views of how his wife and children should behave with him. The way he treated his wife, daughter and son is frankly shocking. As the book progresses, we find out that he was also suffering from mental illness.

 

To elaborate, in many families in India, wives are still second-class citizens. They are there to cook food, bear children, raise them, and be obedient. Also, the fathers demand their children to become doctors, or lawyers, or investment bankers. Those are, in their opinion, the surest ways of making money, and that they believe would lead to happiness. These beliefs come with them as they emigrate to US.

 

Children are also made to believe that as Indian immigrants, they are exceptional. Unlike the population around them, they have to study hard, ignore any distractions, and become doctors. If they fail to achieve the target professions, they are treated like failures. 

 

Another point that Prachi makes is that as a brown person, she felt like a fish out of water in school and work environment which was mostly white. Surely discrimination exists and one cannot deny how she felt and coped with the situation. 

 

However, there is one point I would like to make in that regard. It appears that Prachi’s parents did not make too much effort to assimilate in America. In other words, they remained “Indians in America” and not become “Americans with an Indian Heritage”.

 

I am a strong proponent of the latter. By assimilating, while not abandoning your Indian heritage, you can have the best of both worlds. There is so much that this country and immigrants from the other parts of the world have to offer. Different cultures, food, music, and life stories. Doing it also gives you confidence in dealing with people who are not like you. It reduces “them vs us” attitude and you may stop seeing every action by “them” as an indication that it was based on racism, when very likely it was not. That has been my experience.

 

One caveat. My experience was based on working at high level consulting firms where having people with a variety of backgrounds is common. I am sure the same situation exists in hi-tech firms as well. If you are in a field where those who work are either less educated or live in a more insular world, the situation would be different from what I experienced. 

 

To make it more complex, in some situations, they are looking for an Indian (say, because they want to make a movie about India) and assume that you are an Indian because you look like one, when you really are an American who has parents from India. You get discriminated when they find out that you are too much like them, and not different. 

An interesting paradox, isn’t it? 

 

Overall, as immigrants, one of the most important challenges we face is raising our children. While there is no one way to raise them, the attitude we have toward our new country matters a great deal in whether they end up flourishing and being happy. 

I am eager to find out

  

The current world is filled with many uncertainties that may not be resolved in my remaining life time. So, what if there is a way (cryogenic or otherwise) by which my body is preserved after I die, and I am able to wake up and peek at the future. Say 50 years from now. Wouldn’t that be exciting?

 

Here are some of the things I am eager to find out.

 

Let’s start with my two grandchildren. They would both be middle aged by the time I wake up. What would they be doing? What type of education did they have? What career did they select? Did that require going to a place called “office”? If they did not go to an office, what happened to all the office buildings? More importantly, how did they manage to make a living in an AI dominated world? Was there a guaranteed universal income that kept them going?

 

I also wonder to what extent AI would have influenced the human civilization. There is currently an extreme point of view that AI would dominate the world and humans will become secondary. Did that come to pass? Or, was AI absorbed in the civilization as other human progresses have?

 

Given the progress in AI and robotics, I won’t be surprised when I wake up that a special service would be available to wealthy folks to that they could live forever. They would be able to get a brain transplant and a robot would imitate their physical structure. For poorer folks, the advances in medicine would guarantee a disease-free life, even if it were just 150 years, and not forever. Is that what is coming?

 

I am also eager to find out what will we use for entertainment and communication in the future? Will there be TVs and laptops? Social media? Would people be communicating through brain implanted chips instead of external devices? How common will be holographic images for communicating, teaching and entertainment?

 

Will anyone physically travel to see a place and experience its culture? The way things are going, every nook and cranny of this earth would have been covered by hordes of tourists, so will people prefer to travel through virtual reality? 

 

What is more certain is the future of routine transportation. When I wake up in 2074, I am almost certain that nobody will be driving a car, or whatever that device is called. With AI firmly in place, every vehicle will be autonomous. The current automotive industry would have become completely different. Will they still exist or AI dominated firms take over the transportation segment of the society?

 

Talking about another major uncertainty hanging over our heads today, I wonder what would the world look like in 2074 after 50 more years of climate change. Would the civilization blunt the rapid change in climate? When I wake up, will I be in some place safe from extremes of rain and heat? Will that be on earth or would I be transported to be a part of the human population that had shifted to moon or even mars to escape the savagery of climate change?

 

In that regard, how common would it be to travel to Moon or Mars in 2074? Would Moon be a routine destination for tourists (after they have saturated every place on earth)? Would Mars be accessible for the more adventurous types? More appropriately, would either of my grandchildren have traveled to Moon or Mars? 

 

Would they have found life outside our earth? I have high hopes that some form of life, even microbial will be discovered in my life time. There are probes going to places like Europa and Ganymede that will send back some confirmation in 2030s. Perhaps JWST will detect some signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. However, it is more likely that we will have a more definitive answer when I wake up in 2074. How exciting!!

 

The universe is a special place. Currently, two major uncertainties are regarding dark matter and dark energy. There are speculations about what they are, after all they make up most of the universe. However, by 2074, there will be definite answers. Then the next question will be how will that affect our concept of ever-expanding universe. Will it eventually collapse? 

 

So many questions. I hope we will have answers to some of them in fifty years.. 

Experiences

  

“Do not acquire things, acquire experiences instead.”

 

I am sure you have heard people say that. I say that. Having downplayed material acquisition and spending time and money on gaining experiences almost throughout my life, I can claim that this saying has traction. 

 

Let me cite some examples of how people generally gain experiences:

 

For many of us, if not most, “experience” involves some form of travelling. It allows you to see new places and enjoy new cultures. Booking.com, a well-known travel site lists attractions, activities and experiences on its website. Packaged experiences. 

 

However, after a while, just sightseeing does not cut it. For some of us, to gain real experiences you must have interactions with locals, talking to them, observing their customs, listening to their music, and eating their food. That is generally difficult to do if you are travelling with a group. In that case, most of the interactions are with the fellow travelers, and not with locals. Yes, some of the tours now have time set aside for a cooking lesson or tea with a local person. However, that seems more like a contrived experience than an authentic one. 

 

For a more authentic experience, one needs to travel solo or just with a partner. Also, one would think that staying in an Airbnb, instead of a hotel, may allow for a more personal touch. But that is not always true. Even an Airbnb rental can be a completely impersonal experience. “Here is the combination of the lock, enjoy your stay.”

 

Perhaps backpacking and staying in someone’s home will bring you closer to local population, but that type of travelling is not for everyone. One person whose book I skimmed through goes one step further. In her quest to experience the changing way of life in India, she spent weeks with some families. That way she really experienced what it was all about. 

 

If you look at the definition of experience, it is: “a practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation of or participation in events or in a particular activity.” That opens up a number of interpretations. Let me give some examples:

 

The first one relates to a tour that one of my relatives went on. This was through Italy, a country full of sites to see, food to experience (by my definition) and a very boisterous population. However, for her the experience was being with fellow tourists who cracked jokes and danced after a few glasses of wine. 

 

Then again, so many people travel by cruise ships, often with friends. In that case being with people whose company you enjoy is an experience, whether it involves significant sight-seeing or not. In fact, some cruises are with no destination, just roaming around. They do not even pretend to be providing anything else but company of fellow travelers and facilities. Sure, for many, that too is an “experience”.

 

A really interesting example of what people call experience is something I found out through conversation with a wealthy person from Mumbai. She mentioned that some of the rich young ladies in her home town are after “experiences”. “That’s why they select to buy an expensive purse instead of storing wealth under lock and key as one would if invested in gold or some such commodity.” Hmmm, buying a Gucci for an outrageous price is acquiring an experience and not a thing? What experience would that be? Going shopping? Bargaining with the seller? Making your friends jealous? 

 

So, the personal choice extends to not just how one acquires experience, the way it is normally interpreted, buteven the way it is interpreted.

I am in awe!

I am an engineer with a strong affinity for science. I firmly believe that science will be able to keep answering our questions about the universe and our existence. We will keep making progress and at the same time, continue to face additional mysteries to address.

 

However, that does not prevent me from feeling a sense of awe at the world and how amazing is its scale. Perhaps this is a child-like reaction, like the one you get when you look beyond all the reasonings and explanations.  

 

Of many, here are two areas that create that sense of awe for me.

 

As I go on a long-distance flight, and see the world below me, I cannot but feel that our earth is huge. After flying for over 17 hours (as I did on way to Singapore), I appreciate that to go around the whole earth will take a lot longer. I am just a minor speck on this vast planet.

 

And our vast planet is rotating around sun, which is many times bigger. More than hundred times in diameter. However, on scale of the universe, our sun is practically insignificant. When I look up in dark night and see the Milky Way galaxy, I appreciate the fact that sun is just an average size star among 100 billion of them. 

 

Now comes the next part. Our galaxy is just one out of some 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. When you look at the images sent by the James Webb Space Telescope, the field of observation is filled with galaxies everywhere (besides stars in our own galaxy).Just imagine how much stuff is around.

 

Now comes the two clinchers: What we don’t see in this vast universe is dark matter. The science is still not clear what this dark matter is, but whatever it is, the amount of it is huge, probably four times what we see.  The next one is even more mind blowing, and that is dark energy. The amount of dark energy is perhaps four times the combined amount of visible universe and dark matter. 

 

If that is not awe inspiring, here is the final point: All that visible matter, dark matter and dark energy emerged from a point, by some estimate, as small as a fraction of millimeter in diameter, when the Big Bang occurred. 

 

That to me is truly mind blowing. 

 

The other area that is equally amazing starts out very small. I am talking about a cell, a human cell, for example. It contains some 100 trillion atoms. Not only that, these atoms are parts of some very complex molecules that perform very specific functions. There is of course the nucleus with its magic pairs of DNAs. Some six billion DNAs are packaged into 23 pairs of chromosomes. These are the ones that transmit our legacy to our children, besides performing myriad functions. 

 

In addition, a cell consists of cytoplasm within which lie intricate arrangements of fine fibers and hundreds or even thousands of miniscule but distinct structures called organelles. It is all contained in a membrane. What is awe inspiring is that all these tiny elements work like clockwork to make cell a living thing which make up more complex structures in a human being (as well as in plants, insects, animals, and so on). 

 

How many cells are there in a human being? About 30 trillion cells, according to some researchers. This now sounds more and more like the number of stars in a galaxy and number of galaxies in the universe mentioned above. What is amazing is that all these cells are so structured and arranged that a human has the ability to do all kinds of things that we expect a living being to do.  These cells are arranged to provide us a skin to package and protect us, a respiratory system to breath, a digestive system to convert food into energy, and so on. Sitting above all is the brain, which contain 86 billion neurons making 100 trillion connections to each other. Through this massive machinery, we are able to think, store information, direct our muscles to do tasks, and even be conscious. 

 

The final amazing number is that of microbes living with us. They help with the digestive system, among other functions. The estimated number of these microbes is about 40 trillion. So, when we move, some 70 trillion cells move with us, doing things that we don’t even need to think about.

 

What can I say?  Even as a fairly well educated rational human being, I am in awe!!

Edge of knowledge about life

 A fascinating book I read recently is by a famous science writer, Lawrence Krauss. The title of the book is “The Edge of Knowledge: Unsolved mysteries of the cosmos.” It is a fairly dense book, difficult to understand sometimes, that deals with five topics: Time, Space, Matter, Life and Consciousness. According to him, the two most inspiring mysteries of nature are the last two: Life and consciousness. Here is my attempt to describe his take on Life, which I find very interesting. 

 

The first issue he deals with is what exactly is a living organism and how do you separate it from the non-living collection of molecules. He says that “Living organisms are generally thought to be an open-systems that maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, have a life cycle, undergo metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, reproduce and evolve (Wikipedia).” In this rather lengthy definition, “homeostasis” is a moderating feedback loop to maintain a kind of static equilibrium. So, one could say that a fire is not a living organism because it does not maintain homeostasis. This is a fairly comprehensive definition, in my opinion that adds several parameters I had not thought about, such as responding to stimuli.

 

He then describes four key attributes associated with observed life on earth: 1. Informational molecules/genomes to enable faithful reproduction, 2. The building blocks of metabolism, typically molecules called ATP that allow life forms to store and manipulate energy, 3. Protein catalysts to allow biological reactions to proceed, and 4. Compartments/membranes that separate the workings of living things from their environment. If you are familiar with what a cell is composed of, this list makes sense. A cell is an incredibly creation of nature which forms the building block of all things living.

 

Now we are entering the religious and philosophical domain. How could such a complex thing come about without the hand of god or an intelligent designer?

 

Krauss says that it is possible to have an explanation about origin of life that does not require god or an intelligent designer. Although the final answer is not found at present, there are three possibilities: 1. Scientists have identified exotic environments where there is new chemistry that creates complex biomolecules, 2. Many basic organic building blocks of life, including amino acids have been discovered in meteorites and comets, 3. RNA (which has both genomic and catalytic functions) provides a possible pathway to replicating structures in advance of biology. Krauss believes that eventually we will find the answer to origin of life using science, since we already have several strong candidates. I agree with him.

 

One most obvious next question is what about life elsewhere, outside of earth? What should we expect? 

 

Regarding extraterrestrial life, Krauss sees three possibilities: 1. Extraterrestrial life might be based on exactly the same chemistry that we see on earth. 2. We discover life that has different rules, different genetic backbones than RNA and DNA, different metabolic pathways, and different sources of energy. 3. Life that bears no resemblance to life on earth. Perhaps we are too conditioned to expect life looking similar to what we are familiar with. That may not be the case.

 

The question is: Will we find extraterrestrial life? In fact, do civilizations exist elsewhere in the universe?

 

In 1961, Frank Drake estimated a way of estimating active, intelligent and communicative civilizations in the Milky Way. It is composed of a number of probabilities that begins with number of stars in the galaxy X Fraction that have planets around them (which we know is approximately one, given the number of exoplanets we have already found) X Fraction of planets that can potentially develop life X Fraction that do indeed develop life X Fraction that develop intelligent life X Fraction that develop communications technology X Fraction that attempt to communicate. 

 

At the moment, we are busy trying to find planets that can potentially develop life whether they do develop or not is a separate question. For example, three moons of Jupiter (Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto), plus two of Saturn (Enceladus, and Titan) have potential for life development. Several space probes will further enhance our knowledge of these potential cradles of extraterrestrial life.  Let’s see what happens. The other fractions in Drake’s equation are still wild guesses.

 

At some point, life will not be tenable on earth. Whether a solution is found to manage these catastrophic events or human beings will find home elsewhere is a question that keeps science fiction writers busy. Krauss thinks that we are not that well suited for interplanetary travel much less interstellar. He thinks that it will not be human beings but the instructions to make humans that will go beyond our solar system. Also, who is to say that the dominant intelligence on earth may not become silicon based rather than carbon based? In that case, life might never end in the universe; it just won’t be the same life that survives. 

 

Many folks argue that so many things in universe had to go right for life to exist, and therefore there has to be a divine intervention. Krauss says that the universe is not fine-tuned for life, rather life is fine tuned for the universe.