When someone’s monssey (superduper-rich slang for ‘money’) drops by more than $115 billion since January 2022 – the most money any person has lost in the history of money – those who’ve thrown money at that particular someone to make more money have the right to be more than upset. So why is Elon Musk ET’s AI Person of the Year? Because he’s the person whom we can:
- …be as sure as we are of TCS stocks behaving themselves to be an artificial intelligence – and not a Tony Stark-Iron Man from the Marvel universe. It would be fair to surmise that he is a short-circuited algorithm rather than a short-sighted human because of his erratic business behaviour. In fact, by being Musk, Musk points to the dangers of extreme AI.
- …take potshots at without worrying about anyone in the vicinity being offended (or worry about offending) politically, economically, religiously, ideologically, pharmaceutically… For one, being non-Indian, far away and not close to anyone in our ‘You-scratch-my-back, I’ll-have-your-back-if-wethink-it’s-worth-it’ world, Musk is fair game and a happy repository for all our pent-up bile against members of The System now that Rahul Gandhi and his great grandfather are passé as fall guys.
- …love, after the scale of destruction Musk has wrought on Twitter, which if he’s successful may return most of us from our beloved handles to Real Life® where things continue to exist even when not blue checkmarked.
Musk is Whitmanesque in that he is large and contains multitudes. The martini-toasting Great Gatsby. The ultimate Gamer at his Iron Throne in Austin. The Buzz Lightyear in our collective toy story. The anomalous charm offensive billionaire. The Roaring Twenties EV-teaser. The workaholic’s hero in the era of quiet quitting. The champion of ‘absolute free speech’ – where free speech bears the characteristics of Chinese democracy and absolute that of the general theory of relativity.
The lasest trick-cum-treat from these multiple Elon avatars came in the form of a survey earlier this month. It (read: Musk) asked whether Musk should continue as Twitter CEO or not. 57.5% of 17,502, 391 voters said, ‘Na, bhai.’ Let’s see whether he acts upon this mandate, as he promised he would. Although, as is as obvious as Donald Trump’s hair being of a Deepikakini ‘besharam’ colour, Musk is probably going to use the poll result as a patli gali to do what his irate investors want him to do anyway: scram from Twitter and put his mind to fixing Tesla etcetela. Remember, Tesla shares have fallen this week by 73% from November 2021.
So, as far as businesspersons go, Elon Musk is – and, especially in 2022, was – one of a kind. As far as an AI goes, throwing up random sequences beyond the purview of business NI (natural intelligence), he was exemplary. Thus, Elon Musk, regardless of whether he really exists or not, is our AI Person of the Year.
ET INDIAIN OF THE YEAR: AIR INDIA MAHARAJA
With Air India officially handed back to its original owners, the Tatas, on January 27, 2022, the airline was ready to hit the tarmac with new fuel in its tank. While much of last year had experts talk about the challenges before the new-old management, we thought it would be grand to give the original AI’s mascot, the Maharaja, a leg-up – and a face-lift – by naming him the AI Indian, or the phonetically awkward IndiAIn of the year tag. While some may find this honour a bit premature, we reckoned that if Barack Obama could have got a Nobel Peace Prize 10 months into his first presidency, AI’s Maharaja could very well get a 2022 cheer in advance for the job he’s cut out to do this year ahead.