In 2022, a few months before his death, I used to ask my father about his days back in the village, his college days and also his early days in Delhi. He told me about his village Jagaveerapuram and the neighbouring village of Meenashipuram, the village temple, the water tank and Viaper River flowing a few miles away and so on. In my attempt to impress my father, I did a quick Google search of his village and showed him satellite imagery of that area. Yes, row houses in the village, the temple, the tank and the dry-bed of Viaper River were all there in the image. My father’s face lit up. He wondered how this was even possible. “That is the power of Internet and Google”, I exclaimed while trying to explain to him how the Internet worked and also how so much information could be gleaned in a jiffy. My father just shook his head still unable to fully comprehend and wonder about advances of technology.
A few days later, my father asked me to check for other details on the Internet – whether something on his friend “Shiv K. Gupta” who was a Professor of Operational Research at Wharton Business School in the 1970s was available. Yes, an article about him was there and when I showed it, my father was amazed. Then, he asked me to check regarding his bureaucrat friend “Sethuraman” from the Indian Audit and Accounts Service who had earlier lent him precious 300 rupees for his marriage in 1952 and retired in the 1980s. Interestingly, his name too appeared on the Internet. In this way, my father’s interest in finding more about the whereabouts of his other long-lost colleagues in St. Stephen’s College and elsewhere on the Internet continued. Meanwhile, his interest in locating various places associated with his youth increased manifold. He still could not fully appreciate how such decades-old information was still available for everyone to see.
One day he asked me to check about one “Kalugumalai Kamatchi Reddiar” from some “Vathalakarai” village. Incidentally, this gentleman was a prominent landlord and banker in the 1940s. Though the village could be located on the map, no trace of this gentleman was available despite several Google search attempts with different prompts. It was really difficult for me to explain the limitations of the Internet to my father. He felt I was making some mistake as the Internet could not be incorrect.
Now, cut to 2024. Recently, I tried to generate some content about the life of my father using AI. The AI-generated output (in slide form) is given in the end of this post. The overall result took me by surprise. While the AI tool correctly identified the role of my father as an Economics teacher and author, it randomly named the books that he had never written, and highlighted his achievements that he never received. I must thank God that my father did not live long enough to see such AI-generated content about himself. He would have been shocked to read this. I am sure that his interest about the Internet would have ended much sooner that I can imagine.
