Review: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In 2014, a young and ambitious Oxford university under-grad Jim Watson had a bold idea. Inspired by the story of the success of Deepmind, and its acquisition by Google (now Alphabet), Jim dreamed of using AI to uncover the emotional state of a person using just a sentence long enough to be a tweet. Given the recent advancements, brilliant young Jim decided that the time was ripe to jump on the AI bandwagon and develop this world-changing product. So Jim dropped out of Oxford, and started the journey towards turning this audacious idea into a real product. Jim was incredibly inspired by Andrew Ng, one of the world's foremost experts of Machine learning and deep learning. So inspired, that he started wearing only blue shirts like his hero Andrew Ng, and decided to learn Mandarin as well.

So our charismatic, visionary and glib hero assembles a team of highly qualified people and starts developing the product. But no matter how sexy you make it sound or how brilliantly you talk about it, technology that IS magical cannot be developed magically through the flourish of a wand. It takes an inordinate amount of time, effort and resources, and some luck. Language is inherently complex and dynamic. It keeps changing. Developing an AI that understands human language is the one of the most difficult problems in the world and claiming to assess the emotional state of a person from a sentence long enough to be a tweet is a really tall order. But only idiots who are rooted to the ground and don't dare to dream big will be shaken by that. Visionaries like Watson who posses the ability to project a reality-distortion field can always find a way around any problem.

Given that the product was far from complete, Watson instead hired a small army of human translators, who apparently were only assisting to refine the algorithm, but in reality were doing the actual translation. Under a cloak of secrecy, through open and veiled threats, and a philosophy of "deceive-inveigle-obfuscate", Watson managed not only to keep the truth hidden, but convinced a host of luminaries from different walks of life that the technology existed, worked and was just a few months away from release. And in this fashion, Jim Watson managed to raise hopes, raise funds, raise his status and managed to create a company that was valued at close to ten billion dollars. Until the bubble burst.

The aforementioned Jim Watson is merely a figment of my imagination. If you replace the "tweet-long-sentence" with blood, change the product from emotional-analysis to blood testing, replace Andrew Ng with the late Steve Jobs, and Watson with Holmes, you basically have the plot of Bad Blood.

While reading the book, I kept repeating "I can't believe this really happened" and "How on earth is this even possible" to myself. How can you hoodwink a group of some of the smartest, most astute people in the world, be valued at $ 9 billion dollars and yet have a joke of a product? That too, in an industry which is regulated and which affects the lives of people. We are not talking about some dopey social media application or some gaming app. This product was designed to test BLOOD. Consider the ramifications of the testing going wrong. A false positive would potentially lead to more tests and/or treatment for a condition the patient does not have, in a country notorious for its extremely high health care costs. A false negative, could lead to a misdiagnosed or undiagnosed patient, assuming the caregiver doesn't order the test from another credible source. And who is to be blamed if such a patient dies because of this erroneous diagnosis?

The one thing that struck me the most was the extent to which the esteemed backers of Holmes defended her and could see nothing wrong with her. I fail to understand why. What kind of emotions would cloud your judgement to that extent, especially when the stakes are so high? I am sure in the ancient times, having such sway over people would have been deemed sorcery, and Holmes could have been branded a witch. Good for her, that we don't live in those times. Theranos was a veritable house of cards. Its product was vaporware. The ultimate lesson is that the proof is in the pudding. Any product, big or small, has to work consistently, all the time. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Kudos to John Carreyrou for publishing the story. Bad Blood would be etched in my memory for a very long time.

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Review: Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was vaguely familiar with Trevor Noah, occasionally coming across his show in Netflix. I also stumbled upon the book numerous times, but besides a glance, I didn't engage with it. Until, I decided to listen to the book, which is narrated by Trevor himself. And I was hooked. Born a crime is tale of Trevor's childhood, his struggles as the son of a struggling single mother, as a colored child who didn't really fit anywhere, in the apartheid era of South Africa. What I appreciate the most about the book is that it is also a first hand account of what the apartheid was all about and how that system worked. The story, in parts is also a biographical account of Patricia Noah, who should be a celebrity of some sorts given how much she has endured without a trace of bitterness or self-pity in her personality, according to her son. I am looking forward to this artist's future works, be it books or stand-up acts.

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Review: Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

David Goggins could not have chosen a better title for his book. This is the tale of a man who turned his life around to become a Navy SEAL and a world-class endurance athlete. Considering all his feats, he comes as a superhuman. His story is inspirational as well as cautionary. The level at which he operates, the pain he subjected himself to and his drive are definitely inspirational. The way he ignored his body's warning signs at times is cautionary. The liberal use of swear words in the book also does not make the writing elegant. However, I don't think that's what the author had in mind. The book is hard hitting and honest. This is guy is no b*********r. It gave me a new perspective on pain, and its role in our life. The wisdom Goggins espouses in this book is product of his first hand experiences. At the end of the day, I would count this as one of the better books I have read.

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Review: Children of Time

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Children of Time was the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke award for 2016, for a good reason. The author has done a great job of balancing the elements of science and the elements of fiction. The sci-fi parts of the story are delicious - my imagination was tickled pink at the thought of those technologies become real someday, and hopefully not at the cost of the downfall of humanity. The struggle of the characters, both human and arachnid felt so real. The issues that he brings forth through his tale are rooted in reality. As I finished the book, it brought tears to my eyes. What was it that bright tears to my eyes would remain unrevealed, but I was genuinely moved by the way the story ends. Children of Time is an outstanding book of science fiction and I would recommend to this to any true-blue fan of Science-fiction.

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Review: The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Why do we read Dystopian literature? Why do writers write such stories? I think we need to be constantly reminded of how precious is the liberty that we enjoy. We, who are fortunate enough to live in societies and countries where the Government is not suppressing individual freedom, at least not overtly and totally. The Handmaid’s tale is poignant tale of women living under a totalitarian patriarchal regime, in a nation that formerly used to be the United States of America.

The irony is that the state of affairs described in the Handmaid’s tale exist in our world today. There is no nation called Gilead and the maids are not named “Offred” or “Ofglen”, but the fact that women are considered merely a tool for serving males is not a concept foreign to a number of societies in today’s world. In traditionally patriarchal societies of China and India, there already exists a problem of gender imbalance.

Imagine, if this problem exacerbates to the point where some maniac decides that henceforth, women should be considered a depleting resource of national importance and shall serve the nation by child-bearing and child-raising alone. The fact that such a move will also effectively eliminate all women from the work-force, thus increasing the number of jobs available for men would make a lot, if not all men happy. In the developed world, where declining birth rate, fear of loss of jobs through AI and automation and a growing discontent among the mainstream population due to unequal distribution of wealth, how unlikely does the aforementioned scenario sound?

Dystopian novels tend to serve as stark reminders of how the future might unfold were our society to take the freedom we enjoy lightly and the Handmaid’s tale does a very good job of it. In my humble opinion, it ranks among the best dystopian novels written till date, and one that might just become true, if we are unfortunate enough.


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