Letters to The Editor

PTI (Press Trust of India) has reported that China's Parliament on Thursday last adopted the 14th Five-Year Plan, the mega blueprint containing billions of dollars worth of projects, including the controversial hydropower project on the Brahmaputra River in Tibet close to the Arunachal Pradesh border over which India has raised concerns. China could build up to 60 GW of generation capacity on the river, which would make it the world's biggest hydropower project. This would be extremely dangerous, especially for Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and, of course, Bangladesh.

India, unfortunately, of late, has not been able to resolve vexed issues with China. The project spelling doom on the Northeast part of India is quite evident.

D Bhutia,

Guwahati.

AGP stance on CAA

The BJP-AGP alliance will contest the forthcoming Assembly election in Assam. The AGP is a regional party in Assam and the BJP is a national party. The policies of the AGP are different from those of the BJP. Particularly, in respect of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, stances of the AGP are different from those of the BJP. As such, the laymen in Assam have found hard to define the character of the AGP, whether it is a national political party or a regional political party. The indigenous people in Assam do not support the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, while the BJP supports it. On paper, the AGP is against the contentious Act. Now the question is how the AGP can forge alliance with the BJP which supports the Act. The AGP should explain its stance in respect of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act to the people of Assam. The indigenous people in Assam will never support the political parties that support the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

Maheswar Deka,

Rangia.

COVID vaccination

The government has started another phase of COVID-19 vaccination to cover senior citizens, but with prior registration. It is a fact that getting registered through the relevant portal or even otherwise, may be difficult for most senior citizens. The best way is that the authorities concerned should chalk out a list of senior citizens by accessing their DoB from voter lists and get them registered for vaccination in coordination with the Health Department.

Chandan Kumar Nath,

Sorbhog.

Neurons in AI system

OpenAI, a startup founded by Elon Musk recently uncovered what is referred to by neuroscientists as a 'multimodal neuron' within a maze's inner workings of one of its most advanced neural networks. This multimodal neuron was spotted in the human brain over a decade ago, where researchers found that the human brain possesses neurons that respond to a common theme either symbolically, literally or conceptually.

The existence of these neurons was made by using a general purpose vision called CLIP, an AI system that trains itself on complex datasets to recognize specific objects and people in abstracts such as cartoons or statues. CLIP connects concepts with a mutual common ground either by responding to an image, a drawing or a text.

A famous neuron among these is the 'Spider-Man' neuron that responds to the image of a spider, an image of the text "spider" and the comic book character, either in costume or illustrated.

In a tweet, OpenAI said, "This discovery is an important step toward understanding the associations and biases that large language models learn during training, so we and other AI practitioners can ultimately make them safer".

At a time when technology is the cornerstone to the rapidly approaching future, time is of essence in terms of the reliability of this advancement. The timely discovery of these neurons accentuates the nuances required for safer designs of these systems and also eliminates the ambiguity surrounding AI systems, ultimately making them reliable counterparts of the massive technological revolution.

Raajit Chattopadhyay

Bengaluru.

Heavy vehicles plying in city

Heavy vehicles such as trucks and dumpers, especially the ones carrying heavy and risky goods like iron rods, bricks, sand etc., create a lot of trouble during the busy hours of the day. These vehicles are mostly found recklessly driving due to which we observe frequent road accidents. A few days back a dumper fell off the Jalukbari flyover on the top of a parked bus. Thankfully the bus had no passengers or else the scene could have been much worse. Also these heavy vehicles happen to be one of the major reasons for traffic congestion. This traffic congestion causes delays and that delay may cause so much inconvenience to people.

Road accidents are increasing at an alarming rate day by day. Therefore, it is my humble request to the authorities concerned to take proper measures to restrict such heavy vehicles into the city during the day and also to impose fine for over speeding and over loading.

Anuhita Kachari,

Guwahati.

Theme song of polls

In the forthcoming Assembly election of Assam the government has announced a theme song which is very pleasing. The government has alerted the citizens to come out and take part in the election for building our nation in a proper way. I am a senior citizen and I like this song's lyrics and tune.

Putul Sarma,

Biswanath Chariali.

British Parliament & internal matters of India

It refers to British Parliamentarians hitting back after the Indian government summoned the British High Commissioner to India to warn against the British Parliament staging debates on the mass protests by Indian farmers.

It seems that British Parliamentarians are still under impression that their country rules India like it did before 15.08.1947. It is time India initiated move to dissolve the Commonwealth of Nations which still has its permanent head as Britain monarchy ruler with other nations ruled in past by Britain as its members. There is already one United Nations (UN) comprising countries as its members despite their affiliation with any group. It may be recalled that protocol issue emerged during CWG 2010 held in New Delhi only because of permanent superiority of British monarchy ruler over other Commonwealth nations.

Subhash Chandra Agrawal,

Delhi.