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Upgrade with Dr. Pain's take on NASA, Einstein and Education
91 Plays4 years ago
We are in conversation with Bedabrata Pain, a.k.a, Dr. Pain who’s list of accolades reads like an encyclopaedia. A former IITian, a NASA scientist and has more than 75 patents to his name! In fact, one of his inventions is used by most of us on a daily basis. Guess which one?
Wait. That’s not all. He’s also a screenwriter, a director and producer.
In this episode of Upgrade with Nakul, we talk to Dr. Pain and talk about things as wide as Einstein to education system to digital world to AI and his crazy Idea of making films from the comfort of your home. Tune in to find out Dr. Pain’s logic on how science and philosophy go together and why we need to create problems and not solutions!
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Transcript
Introduction to Upgrade with Naakon
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello guys, welcome to upgrade with Naakon. The point of the show is, we meet interesting people, they give us their productivity hacks, the technologies they use.
Meet Pedro: NASA Scientist Turned Filmmaker
00:00:26
Speaker
Hi guys, welcome to another very interesting episode. And today I am so privileged to have Pedro with me. Pedro is a short form and he is a brilliant NASA scientist who has turned into a filmmaker as well. And you just love this podcast with him. So welcome to the show, Pedro.
00:00:52
Speaker
Hi, sir. I'm Bengali. My name is Bedobrata Pine. Though in this country, a lot of people call me Dr. Payne. For some reason, my dad spelled it that way, P-A-I-N. So I kind of like it, Dr. Payne. Sir, Dr. Payne sounds like an Avengers. Or somebody of my age would be Bond villain, James Bond villain.
00:01:19
Speaker
Even if it's two, two, two, they're Gen Z or whatever, whichever Gen it is. And my name actually in Hindi, my first name actually would be Vaidvrat. Means who's taking Vaidvrat of the Vedas and all. That's why in Bengali it becomes Vaidavvratav. But your friends call you Vaidu. My friends call you Vaidu. So thanks for doing this. So I've read your Wikipedia page. You are a NASA scientist. Yes. You have so many patents in your name.
00:01:54
Speaker
Are you planning to go to Mars next?
Manned vs Unmanned Space Exploration
00:02:00
Speaker
Actually, I think in one of the Jurassic Park movies, there were things saying that there are two kinds of people, people who are astronomers and people who are astronauts.
00:02:14
Speaker
And astronomers kind of observe everything from a distance and astronauts actually go there and do it. And I think I'm much more of the astronomer kind. Even in NASA, we always used to have a huge fight between, you know, NASA had many centers, I think 11 or 13 centers. And we used to have a lot of fights between each other, especially with Houston.
00:02:37
Speaker
NASA Houston and JPL because JPL was in charge of or still is in charge of unmanned space exploration while Houston was all about space exploration.
00:02:53
Speaker
that and obviously it was a matter of money as it always is and everywhere it's ultimately it's a matter of access to resources and money and so whatever money will not be spent in Houston will be spent here and so that would be the fight and
00:03:08
Speaker
We always felt, and I kind of believe in that, that it's much bigger bang for the buck, so to say, much bigger science return when you do on manned space exploration. All the manned space exploration is always, always, always far sexier as even the movie Gravity has shown, right? I mean, that's what you kind of, emotionally, you are much more drawn to it.
00:03:34
Speaker
I remember, I mean, when I was in JPL, there was a time when this challenger was coming in for a land and everybody in the cafeteria were glued to the TV watching it land. So I kind of asked, hey, haven't you seen a plain land before? So I really got booed at that point. So, you know, that kind of tells you what it is, that there is a certain draw to humans doing it rather than a machine doing it.
00:04:05
Speaker
yeah it's like the difference between a documentary and a reality show something like that yeah exactly exactly the reality show is much more jazzed up much more it's much more humanity in it in a way that's kind of weird actually but it's it's you like to see
00:04:24
Speaker
conflict. You like to see people scale a barrier. I think that's what this reality shows, this manned space exploration gives you.
00:04:39
Speaker
you send a robot to Mars and it doesn't quite land. Who cares? Well, you care. But when it's a human, you've seen the movie Martian or you've seen movie Gravity. I mean, the stakes are way, way, way higher.
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah, I love those movies, by the way. When Elon is taking us to Mars, I want to be the first maybe 1000 ones. I don't think I will be the first 100 ones because I won't be able to afford it. But maybe the first 1000 ones. I'd rather make a movie about it. I'd rather travel.
00:05:19
Speaker
Good. So I have my protagonist already. So halfway done to the movie. So you started out in India. Did you ever imagine that you'll be working in NASA someday? How did that come about?
From India to NASA: Pedro's Inspirational Journey
00:05:43
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, you know, I actually don't know because I was born in a very lower middle-class family. I mean, my parents both uprooted from Bangladesh, at that time not Bangladesh, East Pakistan, and came, you know, lock, stock and barrel came to India. And my mother's family settled in a ship to my father's family in Calcutta. So it was, you know, while growing up, it was
00:06:10
Speaker
not happy you know financially not happy times it was difficult very very very difficult
00:06:18
Speaker
But slowly things kind of settled, you know, like when I was, I mean, I was young, maybe when I was four or five years old, they were probably in our one bedroom apartment, there were five, seven, eight people living, seven people living, I think, my father's father's uncles, my father's brother, they're all there. I mean, this is how it was. And from there, it became a nuclear family. And by that time,
00:06:47
Speaker
I think it's my mother. I mean, that's something I have to give it to my mother. She kind of made me believe that I can do much more than what might be expected of somebody in that social stature, social class. And I think that gave me a lot of confidence. Even growing up, oh yeah, I can achieve anything. If I put my mind to it, I can achieve it.
00:07:13
Speaker
Honestly, I think I have become far more cynical now, and that comes with age, I think, than I was, say, even 20 years ago, maybe 10 years ago. Growing up, there was this feeling, and also the Bengal milieu, that we can achieve anything. I mean, you just sort of dream it and it will happen.
00:07:35
Speaker
So yeah, I did not think of NASA but I knew that I could do a lot of things.
Quantum Mechanics: Bohr vs Einstein
00:07:46
Speaker
So what are you up to these days in terms of physics? I would love to know.
00:07:53
Speaker
So it actually goes back to this huge fight between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics as a final thing. It's kind of always thought that it's a
00:08:13
Speaker
stopgap development while Niels Bohr and Heisenberg, they all thought that this is what it is to be. And the main issue was that they said that you cannot know how something comes to be. All you can do is to predict results.
00:08:35
Speaker
while Einstein always thought that you could actually go figure out how something goes from a place A to place B or how it evolves in time and so on.
00:08:47
Speaker
And that led to some very interesting debate in this thing called Solveig Conferences, where Einstein was trying to say, where Heisenberg and Bohr were trying to say that there is a fundamental limit to knowledge. And Einstein was saying that there isn't.
00:09:05
Speaker
And that led to a series of discussions where Einstein was trying to show that, yeah, no, you can know both in this case, both things, meaning in quantum mechanical terms, position and momentum. Stop me at any point of time if I'm being too, too dense.
00:09:25
Speaker
that Bohr and Heisenberg were saying that you cannot know both position and momentum of a particle, whatever you want to call it, a quantum mechanical entity at the same time. You can only know one or the other or you can know both of them to a certain level of accuracy, not more than that. Einstein was trying to show that there is no such limit in nature and you can know both of them equally well.
00:09:54
Speaker
And that led to several conversations. And finally, Einstein came up with a paper, it was called EPR paper written by Einstein, Porolsky and Rosen. And that seemed to indicate that, no, you can transcend that boundary and you can know both those variables with arbitrary accuracy. And Bohr immediately trashed it.
00:10:17
Speaker
and this debate remained open. Till came John Bell in 1963 or something, sometime around that time, he formulated something called Bell's inequality, where I don't want to go into deep dive into that, that will take a long time. But basically he showed that if you do certain kinds of measurements,
00:10:41
Speaker
on what is called correlated particles. So, correlated particles are something like this, correlated photons for instance, something like this, when in some processes you get two photons come out, a quantum of light come out in such a way that this light
00:11:00
Speaker
properties are linked with each other. Like if one of them has a right circular polarization, the other will have left circular polarization. I don't want to go into circular polarization, but just realize that it's kind of like think of a bread. If you take one part of the bread out, you know exactly what the other part of the bread is. It's something on that kind of situation.
00:11:24
Speaker
Tell me of that sort. I mean, it's something like that too correlated. If one of them is high, the other is low. If one of them is left, the other is right. That kind of stuff. You don't know whether it will be left or right, but if you know if one is left, the other is right. That kind of a situation. So with that, John Bell showed that certain measurements will yield results that in classical domain you can never, ever achieve.
00:11:53
Speaker
And Bell showed that in quantum land, you can get statistics that you can never get in real life, that is in our macro world that we live in. And that created a thing that kind of tend to indicate that Bohr is right after all and Einstein was wrong. There is some essential limit of what you can know and what you cannot know.
00:12:23
Speaker
And that has then since been tested and tested and tested. And we have come to a point where people tend to agree that yes, Bell's inequality exists in a quantum world where it does give you this weird correlations that doesn't exist in our world, in our perceptual world, in our macro world.
00:12:52
Speaker
So my work, and what I'm trying to do, and God knows if I'll succeed, my work is to show that even in a macro world, we can get those weird correlations.
00:13:07
Speaker
So quantum mechanics is not so esoteric after all. Even in a real world, we can create those correlations. So if I can show that, then I think we can go back to Einstein and say that, yeah, everything is doable. But I agree to the philosophy that you can never say that there's limited knowledge in the world. There is no limit.
00:13:35
Speaker
Well, I mean, you know, these are actually physical principles that have been developed. And so right now it's more and Heisenberg is winning and Einstein is losing as it stands. So I hope to get a kind of pull for Einstein for a bit. I'll be the next Einstein.
00:13:55
Speaker
Oh, hell no. Einstein was a different sort of a fellow man. I mean, once you realize what he had done, it's unbelievable how he managed to do it. By the way, that's another very interesting thing about special theory of relativity, that most of the equations which Einstein gave birth to as a special theory of relativity of the relativity of time of E equal to MC squared is actually much more than that.
00:14:27
Speaker
Other people kind of derived it already and they didn't realize what they had derived. Einstein came and completely changed our way of looking at things. It's a fascinating story. One of the things I want to do is to actually write a short narrative about development of science and philosophy in the late 19th to the 21st century.
00:14:57
Speaker
the science and philosophy has been very, very closely linked. By the way, I mean, science is actually a pretty new term. I mean, even now, when you get your PhD, when I got my PhD, PhD stands for doctorate in philosophy. It's not doctorate in science. So, you know, science was called philosophy till, I think, mid 19th century.
00:15:26
Speaker
It's somewhere in that mid 19th century, maybe early 19th century, that this philosophy was separated out and came the concept of arts and came the concept of science. And even now in the US, for instance, in India, when we say arts, we mean humanities. I mean, some very specific kinds of stuff. People will be reading English and this and that, and not science, not math, not physics, not chemistry.
00:15:53
Speaker
Not in the US. In the US, if you get a BA, Bachelor of Arts, doesn't mean that you're not doing science. In fact, a lot of the scientists, if you go back into their altricidents, you'll find that they actually have a degree in BA, in Liberal Arts. So in the US, there is this concept of liberal arts. And I think it's a very fascinating concept, where at the college level, what you're being taught is not just kind of one stream, but a very diverse set of things.
00:16:22
Speaker
So, you know, somebody coming out of a college would have a degree, I mean, having a degree would have had read physics, astronomy, ethics, politics of Africa.
00:16:35
Speaker
genomics, God knows what, I mean it's a very very diverse, I mean this education system is very different from how we are, our education system is, so that's another very very big debate, I mean discussion actually. But why do you think, so I am, you are an engineer, I am an engineer, we understand the pressure, but why is art so looked on upon as even as
00:17:01
Speaker
a serious pursuit of education in India. Look, I think I was born at a time in the 1970s when there was all kinds of interesting stuff happening in Calcutta, including political upsurges and upheavals and all the best reigns
00:17:25
Speaker
It's not necessary that all the best brains went into science. Many of them went into arts, into very, I mean, there are very different ways of looking at it. I think the point I'm trying to make is that I think our education system has become very much driven by a career or a job, not by learning or by becoming an individual for the society.
Critique of the Indian Education System
00:17:54
Speaker
So what I think we, it's almost come to be that you go to a college or you go to a school, you go to university. So that coming out of the university, coming out of the college, you would land a great job. So hence the rise of, you know, business administration, MBA. But isn't that supply demand, right?
00:18:16
Speaker
We supply demand for sure, but it's also an outlook. Like the British started our education system. I mean, if you think of our education system before the British, it was very different. The British started our education system because they needed clerks. They needed people who can follow orders, who can execute. And it went execute very well. So the administrative services, today's administrative services, which at that time was called civil services, Indian civil services,
00:18:45
Speaker
were far more based on not original thinking, not critical thinking, not challenging thinking, but execution, but knowledge. I mean, so that you know a whole bunch of things and you can, given this problem, you can solve it. So our education system has been very problem solving rather than problem creating.
00:19:10
Speaker
So I personally believe an education system, a critical element of education system has to be how to create problems because those who create problems becomes the CEOs. Those who solve problems becomes the engineer. I'm joking. No, so this is really interesting. You have to get me to understand what is problem creation.
00:19:39
Speaker
Okay, so, and this is something actually I realized, I was always a very good student in India. I was coming first in class and IIT, I did very, very well as a topper of the class and all that sort of stuff. But I realized when I came to America, and by the way, I mean, in favor of Indian education system, IIT system was that it taught me so brilliantly that at some level when I came from masters, I did my masters and PhD at master's level,
00:20:11
Speaker
I did not have to even blink my eyes. I practically knew all of the stuff from my undergrad. But I also realized the difference. The difference is that, OK, I know an equation. I can solve a problem. But what next? What do we do then? What new thing can we do with it? How can we use the knowledge that I know to create something different?
00:20:37
Speaker
So it's a difference between invention and analysis. So I think Indians are taught to be very good analysts, not as good inventors. Inventing brain is a very different kind of a brain, which can correlate different kinds of problems, understand what is lacking, like what you've done, like, you know, you feel that, okay, this is not there, so let me do this.
00:21:02
Speaker
So the inventor's brain is that, okay, there is a need that is not being fulfilled. And maybe if I connect these two different things, I can go to create something different. That kind of thinking is not there in today's Indian education system. In America, I was like, okay, to question why this is happening
00:21:32
Speaker
was more important than being able to solve a problem. So in one of the classes of our semiconductor physics, semiconductor devices, my professor, Eric Fossum, what he used to do is he used to go to one of the top device conferences in the world. That happens at IEDM. And right after that would be our finals. And he'd come back from that and will give us a device which we have never seen in our life.
00:22:02
Speaker
We were asked, what does this device do? And if this device is to be made, how are you going to do it? So it allowed us to think both analytically and imaginatively. So this imaginative thinking is, I think, that is kind of lacking in Indian education. But do you think maybe in a couple of decades that would change? I mean, I'm sure.
00:22:31
Speaker
US would be in a similar position 50 years ago and things change. Society matures. Will that happen in India as well?
00:22:40
Speaker
I mean, nothing is static, right? I mean, everything moves. So obviously, India is going to a lot of changes. And of course, I have a lot of things to talk about. In fact, one of the big issues in India, I think we are grappling with this concept of mediocrity. I mean, that's another discussion.
00:23:04
Speaker
Actually, Jugaar has its positive and negative sides and we have to understand what the positive sides are and what the negative sides are because in Jugaar there is a great inventiveness, tremendous inventiveness that's there in Jugaar. But in Jugaar there is also the negative side which is to not really fundamentally change anything, to sort of make do with what we have.
00:23:28
Speaker
And I think that both positive and negative side of Jugaar, if you understand, I think we will really move forward. Yeah. Well, so let's talk about CMOS. And I know this is huge. How did it happen overnight?
00:23:49
Speaker
I don't mean overnight like you just came up with it. But did the breakthrough or the actual technology come about? And then everything went crazy. Everybody was like, oh my god, what have you done?
00:24:07
Speaker
how to do it. Naturally nothing of that sort. By the way, another thing I would tell you about invention is that invention also requires a good salesperson.
00:24:26
Speaker
It's a very important thing. That's also something that is that we are not taught. I mean, once you invent, you have to be able to sell that as a big idea to the world. And then the big money comes in. That's where the entrepreneur mentality in the US really becomes a big, big, big boom. So anyway, but coming back to CMOS.
The CMOS Sensor Revolution
00:24:50
Speaker
When I was at JPL, my boss Eric Fossum, we didn't have access to many of the technologies. At that time, charge coupled devices, CCDs were a very established technology. There were stalwarts in that field and so on.
00:25:12
Speaker
And, but it was a very kind of, how should I say, very limited access. I mean, you had to be part of the old boys club to have access to that technology, to do any experiment. So, so we said, Hey, I mean, actually Eric kind of said that, I mean, you know, let's just make a crappy sensor that we can do maybe in some other technology. And at least we can do some experimentation.
00:25:41
Speaker
And when the crappy sensor was made, all of a sudden we all realize that, hey, this can be big. There is no reason we have to go through that secret sauce of CCDs to make good settlement sensors. It can be done in the same technology as computers are being made. Of course, there are a lot more changes that are needed, but once you get to the basic technology, you kind of can ride sort of piggyback on top of the
00:26:11
Speaker
of, you know, an existing multi-billion dollar industry, which was the digital processors that existed, right? I mean, that was the time, 90s, 80s and 90s were the time, all the CPUs were coming up, Moore's law was shrinking sizes and making computers readily available. And we kind of piggybacked on that. And that's where came Eric, when he was very good at selling that idea.
00:26:36
Speaker
he took on the stalwarts head on and basically said that look I mean he went to the point of saying C series are dinosaurs so that created a huge ruckus but it allowed a space for this technology to develop if we didn't do that selling maybe the technology wouldn't have developed that that easily but when the invention happened
00:27:03
Speaker
Well, like, OK, yeah, it's interesting. And, you know, I mean, it went through exactly how inventions go through first. People say, it's a small idea. It's good for writing papers. It will never really see light of the day. Then when it does see light of the day, then they come around and say, hey, you are all.
00:27:20
Speaker
I mean, we knew that. It's a simple idea. We were working on it as well. And they start jumping ship. And we saw it. All the CCDs, stalwarts, and now CMOS gurus as well. We knew that. We have been working on this. What's the big deal? Then comes the next stage where they say that, oh, we know this better than anybody else.
00:27:43
Speaker
They're the same guys who, you know, five years ago were dissing your technology. So this is the typical, you know, the trajectory of any new invention and beyond that. And by the way, I mean, the reason why this took off is cell phones. I mean, we didn't even
00:28:07
Speaker
think at that time that that's where the technology will find its home. We thought that we would be making better sensors for science, better sensors for NASA, making smaller sensors because weight is a very big issue anytime you send stuff to space.
00:28:30
Speaker
every kg of weight you add, it triples the cost. So saving weight was a very important thing. And we thought that this technology will miniaturize, make it easier to operate, make it more compact. And the lower power power is another big issue in space missions. So that's where we thought it would be. But the place where it went to in a million years
00:28:59
Speaker
we would never have predicted that mobile phones. I mean, think about it. In the mid 200s, the first decade of the 21st century, mid 2000s, Nokia was the undisputed leader of cell phones. Everybody had Nokia. Nobody had even heard of any other companies, right?
00:29:22
Speaker
And then came the camera integration into cell phones and all of a sudden Nokia was nowhere because Nokia did not adopt that easily enough. Other companies came in and did it and now we have a situation where cell phone cameras, I mean cell phones, mobile phones are known not by their audio quality but by what kind of camera they are carrying.
00:29:48
Speaker
When you go to buy an iPhone versus Samsung, you never compare, oh, maybe this is a little bit better audio, that is a little bit better audio. You don't do that. You just say, oh, that's a 12 megapixel camera, that is a 16 megapixel camera. Why technology gets adopted finally is ease of use. I mean, the reason why cell phone cameras have become so ubiquitous is it's so easy to use. You carry it, pick it up, take a picture.
00:30:16
Speaker
With red, you would take half an hour to set up the camera. With a DSLR, it's kind of bulky. You would keep it in your bag. By the time you take it out of the bag, the thing has gone. Also, maybe the software part, the auto processing power, which a cell phone brings with it. Yes, yes, yes, yes. You have to consume.
00:30:39
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. That was a whole idea of the digital camera because when we first came up with the thing, it was that it would immediately integrate with the digital world way better. That's what I was talking about, the ease of use, that with a touch of a button or with a small menu, you can take a picture, which you cannot do, which you could not do with the whole technology. Yeah. So if you talk to any serious startup in India right now,
00:31:10
Speaker
Half of them are just working on image capturing and processing. Really? Yeah. That's the new thing. It's the TikTok world where why is TikTok so popular and was in India popular till they were banned was because their ability to capture video seamlessly and integrate in their own network.
00:31:39
Speaker
So the content creator didn't need to really go on a Photoshop or an Adobe tool to process it, add jazz to it. Everything could be done on your mobile screen instantly. A couple of my friends were working on this app. So in a half an hour session, you have taken some pictures.
00:32:03
Speaker
And then the app will process all those pictures and make a movie out of it and add music and theme to it, depending on what the app thinks the story is about those pictures.
00:32:20
Speaker
Yes, this is the world. Again, this weekend, this Friday, I had another webinar on, are we in for a surprise in the entertainment world? One of the things I was talking about
The Digital Future of Filmmaking
00:32:38
Speaker
was this Lion King, 2019 Lion King. That entire thing was digital. I mean, it looked absolutely real, but everything was digital. This is a very new step in the development of, I mean, for me, one of the big questions is when would entire movie making process become digital? That you do not go to a real set, you do not go to a location, you do not even have an actor.
00:33:07
Speaker
You create the actor. And so are you saying Shah Rukh Khan will just give us photographs and then the movie will be made itself? We already have had examples of that. You've seen that movie Irishman. Sportsman is Irishman. I didn't like the movie too much. I think it was way too long and I don't know.
00:33:32
Speaker
It didn't really talk to me, but both De Niro and Joe Pesci, both of them were de-aged. I mean, if you actually look at the picture, you'll see that Robert De Niro doesn't look like that today. Entirely digitally done.
00:33:53
Speaker
So a lot of this is available even today using real pictures. And then on top of that, you apply various filters or software processing. But what I'm talking about is that you create a digital human being, that a human being is entirely digital. You entirely create it on your computer.
00:34:19
Speaker
and you give him or her emotions, you give them style, you give them attitude, you give them motion, you give them movement now has become very normal. I mean, if you don't look at a person's face and if you look at a person walking, you can pretty much generate that digitally without a problem.
00:34:37
Speaker
The problem is when you go close up. In many cases, pretty close but pretty close is not good enough because our eye, these are evolutions of human beings, our eye is very sensitive to the other human being because we use that to understand emotional cues, psychological cues, the non-verbal communication. So our eye is very tuned to that. Anything that's off, our eye detects it and is kind of taken out of it.
00:35:07
Speaker
So that's why creating digital humans is a very big challenge. But we are kind of 99% there, but 99% doesn't do it. We need to go to 99.999999. I don't know how many lines. But it's a fascinating world. I don't know. Maybe all of our self-driving cars and digital humans will happen at the same time. Do you know there are already Twitter accounts run by AI?
00:35:35
Speaker
and they have a face and everything and a normal person wouldn't even know that it's not a real person and they have huge following and everything. Just the other day I saw, I think there was an article in Guardian which was an article or an essay written entirely by AI.
00:35:59
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, we are in a very interesting world and it's no longer futuristic, it's here and now. But was the article good? It was pretty good. I mean, it was okay. I read it, I would say, okay, all right.
00:36:19
Speaker
But it wasn't bad. Nothing that I could tell that it's not written by a human being. So if you're just reading it normally, you wouldn't really have guessed it.
00:36:31
Speaker
I wouldn't have guessed it. I would have said the author doesn't really have to have profound ideas, but it's perfectly cogent. It makes a point. And the point is a little trivial. But you read so many trivial articles in magazines, in newspapers. I mean, if I were to grade it, I would grade it just a bit above mediocre. But that's about it. But I could not tell that it's not written by a human being.
00:37:02
Speaker
But are you afraid of a Terminator kind of situation when AI has taken over?
Historical Fears and AI's Future
00:37:11
Speaker
I know there are a large number of people that are very, very afraid of AI and very, very afraid of this kind of a monster. But I think you should go back in history. And this is one of the articles I've been planning to write, hasn't written.
00:37:30
Speaker
this fear has always been there. Whenever a new technology comes in, it goes back to the invention of printing press. That printing press was supposed to be a lot of clergymen who were the main guys at that time, that this is the bringing in of evil. And that has continued every time a technology advancement has been made.
00:37:58
Speaker
when big, you know, steam industrial revolution happened, there were luddites who wanted to break machinery. When computers came, we saw that people said that, oh, it's going to take away all our jobs. Nothing happened. Nothing of that sort happened. And I think AI also, I think I look at it in the way where, you know, with my Mac, every year I see somebody has come up with a way of hacking into my Mac.
00:38:24
Speaker
And every year I find Mac comes up with some patch. And I think AI with AI, we will have that same kind of stuff. I am worried about somebody else using AI as a tool to do something than AI itself doing something.
00:38:42
Speaker
we have seen again I am quoting you historically with wars the technology advancement is faster sure and so that may also turn the tide the other way I mean I yeah but but remember that whatever gets developed in in in during war times is negative yeah yeah that's true important for any any any advancement to happen and that's that's a
00:39:07
Speaker
Sorry, that's a basic point I was trying to put. Anyway, just speaking from my thing that I'm now involved in, movie making, what really excites me right now is virtual production and digital humans.
00:39:23
Speaker
even now, you know, we can create digital humans, which are very, very real. But evolution has made us very sensitive to facial expressions, very sensitive to anything that is off in a face. So that's why that's what makes digital humans that much more difficult. But if we could have it, I think we can create something really, really fantastic. And the second thing that I think is going to happen, which hasn't happened yet, is the limitation of the discipline right now. Everything that we do
00:39:54
Speaker
We are limited by the display. Display technology also has an interesting progression. You look at it at one point of time, people went into movies because that's when they had a display. At home, you did not even have any display technologies available. Now you've gone to a point where you can watch very high quality, high dynamic range, high resolution pictures on your lap.
00:40:16
Speaker
But still, it's limited to that field of view. You don't get that immersion experience. I think that immersion experience will happen with a holographic project. And that technology is, I think, something that is bound to come. I think, you know, two technologies that people are talking about that will be very big.
00:40:32
Speaker
I think I'm not as hot on them, I'm hot on them but not as hot. It's self-driving cars and AI and I'll tell you the two problems with them. One is the self-driving cars again, it's easy to go up to 99% but for a car, for any consumer product is that last 0.9999999% is where the problem is and that's where it's a reason. Already by 2019, there was supposed to be widespread use of self-driving cars and not, not.
00:41:01
Speaker
great in most cases, but in the cases where it fails, it fails magnificent. And that part we haven't really solved. And the second problem with the AI is that AI is still using very linear technique, but world is very non-linear. I'll give you a simple example. Take a feedback. In a feedback system, you have a forward thing and a feedback loop.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah, whatever is a simple first order of feedback. It has two coefficients. One is a front loop gain and
AI's Limitations and Future Needs
00:41:29
Speaker
one is a feedback. So two things if you were to write that as a linear equation, no amount of terms will be able to give you the final out because a feedback system inherently operates
00:41:39
Speaker
So AI, even now, all the explosion has happened on the basis of linear, linear manipulate, nonlinear manipulation, which was being tried with the neural network has not become, and I think that's going to be the next phase. Once that happens, I think AI is really so. But are you, are you afraid of a terminator kind of situation when
00:42:01
Speaker
A.I. has taken over. I know there are a large number of people that are very, very afraid of A.I. and very, very afraid of this kind of a monster. But I think, you know, you should go back in history. And this is one of the articles I've been planning to write hasn't written. This fear has always been there whenever a new technology comes in.
00:42:20
Speaker
It goes back to the invention of printing press. That printing press was supposed to be a lot of clergymen who were the main guys at that time, that this is the bringing in of evil. And that has continued every time a technology advancement has been. When big steam industrial revolution happened, they were luddite who wanted to break a machine. When computers came, we saw that people said that, oh, it's going to take away all our jobs. Nothing happened. Nothing of that sort.
00:42:49
Speaker
And I think AI also, I think I look at it in the way where, you know, with my Mac, every year I see somebody has come up with a way of hacking into mine. And every year I find Mac comes up with some patch. And I think AI, with AI, we will have that same kind of stuff. I have heard about somebody else using AI as a tool to do something than AI itself doing. Yeah, which will happen. There are the naughty ones, right?
00:43:19
Speaker
All I'm trying to say is that it's not that the spectre that's created is that AI itself will become so self-aware that it will do stuff and harm humanity. It would be kind of robots against humanity. This is the stuff of science fiction movies. I think the bigger problem is a handful of people using tools like AI against ordinary people. And we see that already happening in formal surveillance. In India, we have the
00:43:47
Speaker
Pegasus software that has been used to snoop on people, to break into people's digital space. So those are things that I'm more worried about than robot uprising. That I think is a thing of the move. I think I 100% 110% agree. Whenever I've had a debate with anybody on AI,
00:44:08
Speaker
I said I use the same thing when I said hey when computers came everybody said the jobs will be taken by computer now somebody has to make the computers as well so those jobs have increased and similarly somebody has to make the AI better stronger faster and those jobs will increase so it's just upgradation of work rather than you looking at you know that jobs are going
00:44:32
Speaker
Right. That won't happen. There is another interesting thing that I have been thinking about, which is that people talk about population problem, population being a problem. Actually, I think it's the other way around. All predictions are that by 2100, world population will stabilize around anywhere between 10 and a half to 11 billion. It's going to be flat. Then what? Where does a new market come from? We need to find the aliens.
00:45:02
Speaker
We need a new consumer market. People think about population growth. I mean, even in India, if you look at the second derivative of population growth, it's negative. So we are in a falling rate of growth. It's growing, but it's growing at a slower rate than previous.
00:45:18
Speaker
Right. So actually I think the bigger problem will happen if the world becomes population becomes stable because that has not happened with human society in a long long long time. I mean it's only in the back in the primitive days you know of sort of hunter gatherer society that we had had a situation of very stable population. Ever since agriculture population has been constantly on them and for now for the first time population is stable then what? That's very interesting.
00:45:46
Speaker
So I've never thought about it like that. For next 50 years, I run Casify, so I always think, oh, the publish is increasing. My market size will keep increasing, so I don't have a problem for my business. But I have not gone to the extent of 100 years. So yeah, that could be a challenge.
00:46:06
Speaker
It's actually not even 100 years. We had 2020 there. They were saying by 21 years, maybe seven. I mean, I saw the numbers by 2050, things were becoming pretty flat. These are questions. I mean, so honestly, I think this is a much bigger problem than, say, climate. That's like a whole different debate now. It's a whole different debate. I can talk about it in another one hour.
00:46:31
Speaker
No, but what you said about self-driving car, the only way it will work for me in India is that if everybody is being driven through a self-driving car, otherwise the car itself will take care of it.
00:46:49
Speaker
So let's not talk about India and that because India's road infrastructure is at its infancy. Talking about US, I have always thought about in this mind, and I think we should have a very blocky car so that when one person is driving, it becomes almost like a motorcycle when two people come in somehow quickly and I'm making a two people vehicle or make a four people vehicle or eight people vehicle. So I think I kind of think of things in a very blocky way. That's a solution.
00:47:16
Speaker
limited into thinking that, okay, there's a two person thing or a four person thing or eight person, I think our things should be more of as you need, you create ad block. Yes. So if you think from a linear point of view, yes, it works. But if you if you think from a society point of view, it won't work. Well, I mean, you know, you would have a car rental to get there and get that block and then, you know, it would automatically assemble. There would be a robot that within within two minutes automatically assemble.
00:47:45
Speaker
Maybe you go there and say, sorry, boss, we don't have the two person module today. But modularity is, I think, the way to go for for transporting rather than fully, fully public transportation doesn't work or fully individual transportation. Right. So I work in tech startups and there are startups which are pitching me voice boards, which would do my customer support calls.
00:48:14
Speaker
to the customer in a voice and would be as good as chatbots. Now, the sound of it is great for me as an entrepreneur, but still scary. It is scary, but I think it would happen as it happens with all technologies. When a technology is introduced for a short duration, they have the leg up because nobody knows how to break it.
00:48:42
Speaker
very soon somebody or the other will break it. What we are seeing right now, we cannot tell that it's AI generated. There would be some other AI that would come out and tell you what is AI generated and what is not. Technology goes like this. I mean, it's always the surveillance and counter surveillance goes hand in hand.
00:49:05
Speaker
very quickly it becomes part of your regular usage that you forget. I remember a funny thing. I think my generation, our generation has seen the largest change. We have gone from a time when I grew up, we didn't have a fridge in the house. There was no refrigerator in the house. To today's, where we are talking about digital humans.
00:49:30
Speaker
But in the mid 80s when we first saw facts, so my friend sent the facts, he put the thing in and it did whatever it did that those two tune sounds and then the paper came back as it would, right? It sent the transmission.
00:49:47
Speaker
My friend was completely zoned. He said, hey, the thing came back. It didn't go. So I said, what do you think? He's going to tear it into small pieces and send it across to the other side? It doesn't happen. So when new technology comes, there is always a wonder. There is always a wondrousness. There is always a fear. There's always completely readjusting your ideas. That always happens. And very soon, it becomes a blah thing.
00:50:16
Speaker
like self-driving cars at some point of time people will forget that you actually had to sit and hold a wheel. I mean like already people have forgotten stick shift. I mean in America you cannot buy a stick shift car unless it's a high-end sports car or something. You can't buy it. I had to special order my stick shift car.
00:50:41
Speaker
So that's what happens when you get used to technology and what seems so novel, what seems so out of the way, what seems so, I mean, how is it magical becomes, oh, yeah, yeah, that's easy. We get used to it very quickly. I want to do a tangent question. CMOS and you hold the patent, right? Correct.
00:51:11
Speaker
You still get royalty for that. No more. 25 years. I mean, it's funny how quickly things have gone. I mean, not just me, but a bunch of us hold the patents. But the main invention is 1992. And by the way, even when I say we hold the patent, the patent is actually held by Caltech because JPL has a very weird arrangement
00:51:41
Speaker
where we were all Caltech employees. So Caltech is the one who owns the patents, the name inventors are us. And then you get some part of the royalty. We got part of the royalty, we did. But as of 2017, we stopped getting royalties. Because everybody said, bye bye. But you kept inventing more things, right? Sure.
00:52:06
Speaker
Sure. I mean those, I mean, you know, look, the point is that invention itself is, patent itself is not enough. Unless that is used and used in a big way. Right. You don't get royalty. I mean, you know, yeah, you'll get royalty, but that would buy your toothpaste for a month.
00:52:25
Speaker
I mean, I have a few other patterns that might come into play. So we'll see. By the way, I mean, there was the battle was a very interesting battle. So initially, nobody initially, I remember AT&T was a very big player in this area in the beginning. And they
00:52:43
Speaker
They're engineers, the technologies told us that we have been told just go and do whatever you want to do. We have set aside some $1 billion in our for legal battles. So the whole idea was that
00:53:01
Speaker
they will not pay as royalties. They'll just pay their lawyers fees. But then it kind of went to many different iterations. Finally, there was a legal firm that came pro bono and they fought on behalf of Caltech. I think the first company, I think it was Sony that first paid up, I think, if I remember correctly.
00:53:23
Speaker
And then everybody kind of fell in line. The best was with ST Microelectronics. So the ST Microelectronics was dodging. They were based in Europe, so it was anyway difficult to serve the papers.
00:53:44
Speaker
So they couldn't serve the papers. Their CEO or their president, whosoever, would come to conference and quickly vanish before papers could be served. So finally, they actually got hold of a, I don't know how to say it in a politically correct way, but let me not be politically correct, a big big woman. And she started flirting with him and flirted and flirted. And then at the end, she served in the papers.
00:54:15
Speaker
But yeah, there are lots of funny stories. So how many, how many patents do you have right now in your name? Right now, I think it's 96. But a lot of patents are derivative patents. I mean, you know, what is a patent after all? I mean, a patent is a very business proposition, by the way. It's a business proposition that tells you this is what we have invented and how we have made it.
00:54:40
Speaker
And it prevents another party from making the same thing in the same way. So what you have to do in a patent is that you have to be broad enough to include lots of things. Because if you have A, B, C, D, and somebody comes and says, A, B, C, E, and if that's not covered by your patent, they say, we don't have to give you royalty. Because we are making A, B, C, E, not A, B, C, D. Writing a broad way that you cover a lot of things,
00:55:10
Speaker
But you also have to be narrow, so somebody says that it's directly identifiable. To make it broad, it becomes vague sometimes. So bottom line is that you have to go and after one invention, you create 10 different fences around it. Each of them is a patent.
00:55:29
Speaker
Maybe 12 different fences, 12 different things that you make sure that they don't cover. One of the backside illumination patterns, that's one of the mistakes I made, that I left something out and other people started using that method, not using my method. So a patent is to preclude somebody else from making your way. So if they can find slightly different way of doing it, then they're not in violation of the patent.
00:55:56
Speaker
So a patent has a lot of art built into it, meaning this kind of salesmanship's art, so that you can think ahead what others might be doing and you want to prevent them. Or if they use yours, give an oil to them. Art is also so wide, right? Yes. You could have written a book, you could have drawn a painting. Why movies?
00:56:27
Speaker
As I said, I think growing up in Bengal, movies always had a very specific appeal to all of us. Yeah, writing a book, of course. I do want to plan to write. There are many different things that I want to write. I like to sing. That's another thing that I could have pursued. I like to paint. And that's another thing that I would want to pursue. But it's sort of...
00:56:56
Speaker
It looked like there were stories to tell and I would want to tell those stories. In today's world, at least sitting in 2010, it seemed like movies was the best avenue to tell those stories. You can reach out to way more people. That's what it felt like. I think the world has changed in the last 10 years a lot more.
00:57:25
Speaker
If I were sitting 10 years back, would I be going necessarily into movies? Maybe not. But here I was. I was like, OK, yeah. I mean, this is a medium where I can tell stories that I would want to tell. I want to, you know, I think honestly, movies have a connect with people that is far beyond, you know, books or painting.
00:57:51
Speaker
Now, of course, we have social media, so that means something different. But historically, movies have always been a very social medium where you can reach out to a large number of people. You can make difference in a very big way. And in the back of my mind, I think that's what I wanted to do.
00:58:11
Speaker
And that's what I want to do, of course. As I said, things are moving so rapidly. There are lots of different things that have come into, you know, a lot of different tools that have become available now.
The Journey of 'Chittagong'
00:58:21
Speaker
For our listeners, your movie name was Chittagong. My name is Chittagong. It's based on this uprising in 1930s British India in a place called Chittagong, which is actually a town right now in Bangladesh.
00:58:35
Speaker
And there's a story of this 60 kids, kids ranging from the age of 14 to 25, and a school teacher who for the first time kicked the British out of her town in India. This hadn't happened.
00:58:57
Speaker
And my story is of the youngest participant in the, or at least one of the youngest participants in that uprising, Jhunku Subodroi. And it's sort of his journey, he's kind of finding himself and the story ends, I will not tell you how the story ends, the story ends in a
00:59:18
Speaker
But it doesn't end in the traditional sort of, you know, failure way. That much I'll tell you, which is a very different, which is a departure from how all the sort of paid quote unquote patriotic movies are made, where it kind of ends in a failure. But leave that aside. So another movie called Khaleham Ji Jhansi, starring Abhishek Bachchan and Deepika Parukun,
00:59:45
Speaker
and directed after the Guarikar got made on the same subject and all kinds of shenanigans happened. I also had many other setbacks in the process, personal setbacks. To cut the long story short, that movie got released and I did not in 2010 and that movie tanked.
01:00:15
Speaker
within a day. Yeah, I've actually never heard of that title and I've heard of Chittagong. It was one of the biggest disasters which also prevented PVR. It was PVR's first and last producerial venture.
01:00:31
Speaker
So it caused a lot of problems. On one hand, I could not release my movies. All kinds of stuff happened, people backed out, so on and so forth. So I had to wait. And because that movie had come and had done so disastrously, obviously I had to wait. So after two years, and thanks in large parts to Anuraka's ship, we got the movie released.
01:01:01
Speaker
And it did pretty well. More than anything else, it won the national award as the best debut director. It got Prasoon Joshi the best song, Shankar Aisan Loy, the best music. So it did have a huge placement as a result. And it won international film festivals. It won in Sedona Film Festival, the best movie in Montreal.
01:01:28
Speaker
So it took a life of its own. And I think what I've realized is that sometimes when you have to do something, you just have to go for it. I think this is something I was listening to Steve Jobs the other day. And he had also said something similar, that if you have an idea, just go for it. Don't think and make the full plan and then try to do it. You just have to jump in.
01:01:59
Speaker
And that's sort of what it did.
Film Industry Insights
01:02:01
Speaker
It's interesting how everything could have gone wrong and it did go wrong. Everything did go wrong and yet something very beautiful came out of it. You yourself being a scientist, I would peg you for a science fiction guy.
01:02:23
Speaker
Why would you do a period piece? Why would you not do a science fiction genre? Well, as I said, I have many different things. History is one of my favorite things. I love history. History is a very interesting topic. In history, it requires an analytical skill that's unparalleled. It's because you have
01:02:52
Speaker
No, it's true. So, tell me one thing. Why doesn't India produce science fiction movies? Why do we have the same setting? Is that commercially it doesn't make sense or we lack imagination?
01:03:09
Speaker
We don't lack imagination. Indians don't lack imagination. Indians are very imaginative people. I mean, Jugar is probably a good example of the imaginative part of it, although it has its own set of problems. But imagination is never in short supply in India. I think what's in short supply are, you know, are business people having imagination? You go
01:03:39
Speaker
In a movie, we almost always think that it begins with somebody writing a story or a director thinking, I want to make the movie. Actually, a movie happens from backwards. A movie happens from the distributor.
01:03:53
Speaker
The distributor says, yeah, this kind of movie can be put in this kind of theatres, in this many prints, therefore it can make that much money, therefore the movie must be made in this much budget and therefore this producer can get this kind of actor. This is how a movie making happens, while creatively it goes exactly the other way around.
01:04:14
Speaker
Creatively, we start with a story and then we say, okay, who can we have as the actor? Who can we have as the director of photography? Who can we have as a director? Who can we have as this? And then we'll create this product without thinking about the end game. And yet those who are in charge of putting that movie in front of the viewers,
01:04:37
Speaker
And that's a very big thing because a movie making takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of money and therefore the stakes are that much higher. So as a result, it's a small coterie of people gets to control what content goes out in the public. It's true in the US, it's true in India.
01:04:59
Speaker
In India, I think it's amongst the producers and distributors, not of the indie films. I'm talking about the big, big budget films or the Bollywood proper. There is a tremendous lack of risk-taking, tremendous lack of imagination, tremendous lack of aesthetics, and a tremendous lack of looking for something new.
01:05:21
Speaker
I think this goes back into something about India. In the US, you make money by bringing something new. You make money by giving new, better quality. Not so in India. In India, it's Chaltahe. And that, I think, is putting one of the biggest breaks in India moving forward. Not just in moviemaking, but in pretty much every field.
01:05:48
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, you know, do we have visionary producers and distributors in India today? Rarely. Big budget. Again, I'm not talking about indie. In indie films, in regional films, a lot of fantastic content is being produced. And I would say one more thing. I think this advent of the web series, you know, the OT... That will change the theme.
01:06:15
Speaker
has changed, is changing and I just hope that the same set of people doesn't go and inhabit that space because if it's your usual TV people and your usual movie people go and inhabit the Amazon, Netflix space, we will be straddled with shit yet again.
01:06:40
Speaker
I mean, I really think Netflix, Amazons of the world bring completely fresh people. Pero, I had such a wonderful time talking to you and I can't tell you, I'm just thinking about when do we do the next episode with you again.
Conclusion and Future Topics
01:06:58
Speaker
Okay, as soon as I announce my next movie, we are doing an episode. Sure. And then I will talk about
01:07:05
Speaker
how you craft stories? What's the science of storytelling? No, I have so many multiple topics. We can talk about history, we can talk about future, we can talk about movies, we can talk about quantum mechanics. Of course. I would like to talk about, say, my take on five technologies that would be the thing for the next 100 years.
01:07:32
Speaker
But thanks a lot for spending time with me and, you know, just enriching my mind. It has been fantastic and I'm looking forward to your new venture, movie, web series, whatever it is going to be and wishing you best of luck for that. Thank you so much. We will chat very, very soon, I'm sure. So guys, upgrade work here.
01:08:00
Speaker
and we're listening to Update with Knuckles, a production of the 14.8. Don't forget to like and subscribe.