THE unprecedented popularity of ChatGPT has turbocharged the AI hype machine. We are being bombarded daily by news articles announcing humankind’s greatest invention –  Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is “qualitatively different”, “transformational”, “revolutionary”, “will change everything” – they say. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced a major upgrade of the technology behind ChatGPT called GPT4. Already, Microsoft researchers are claiming that GPT4 shows “sparks of Artificial General Intelligence” or human-like intelligence – the Holy grail of AI research.

THE recent Australia, US and UK 368 billion dollar deal on buying nuclear submarines has been termed by Paul Keating, a former Australian PM, as the worst deal in all history. It commits Australia to buy conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines which will be delivered earliest in the 2040s. These will be based on new nuclear reactor designs yet to be developed by UK.

THE Ukraine War has now completed one year. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of the war is that the New START, the last remaining arms control agreement on nuclear weapons and missiles, has also gone into limbo. On February 21, President Putin announced that Russia has “suspended” its participation in New START, though it will still observe the limits set on the nuclear missiles and warheads till the agreement expires in 2026.

THE newsfeeds from the US seem to be completely insane. First, an F22 Raptor, the most expensive US military aircraft, is used to shoot down a Chinese balloon over the Atlantic ocean. Three more "unidentified flying objects" – definitely not balloons are shot down in three days, two over the US and one over Canada.

PEOPLE here on our humble planet, termed “the pale blue dot” due to the way the Earth looks when seen from space, usually get excited at human space flights time when they involve landings on the Moon or, potentially in preparation for a Mars landing sometime in the near future. Even moon landings, however,  soon ceased to electrify live audiences in the US and elsewhere when, just a couple of lunar landings after Neil Armstrong’s historic maiden landing on the Apollo 11 mission, they began to be viewed as rather routine, with even TV networks not relaying live telecasts!