Ashutosh (Ash) Jogalekar is a scientist and science writer based in Boston, USA. He has been blogging at the “Curious Wavefunction” blog for more than ten years, and in this capacity has written for several organizations including Scientific American, Nature and the Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates. His literary interests specifically lie in the history and philosophy of science. Email: ashutosh.jogalekar [at] gmail.com
by Ashutosh Jogalekar AGI is in the air. Some think it’s right around the corner. Others think it will take a few more decades. Almost all who talk abut it agree that it applies to a superhuman AI which embodies all the unique qualities of human beings, only multiplied a thousand fold. Who are the…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Drugs for mental illness are notoriously hard. Human biology is complex, and the brain is even more complicated. We now have a good understanding of the basic mechanisms of neurotransmission, but the drugs we have for treating disorders like depression, anxiety and psychosis are often “spray and pray” approaches, either targeting the…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar In October last year, Charles Oppenheimer and I wrote a piece for Fast Company arguing that the only way to prevent an AI arms race is to open up the system. Drawing on a revolutionary early Cold War proposal for containing the spread of nuclear weapons, the Acheson-Lilienthal report, we argued that…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar The Founding Fathers aren’t much in fashion among liberals these days. A good friend of mine has been trying to get a novel about Thomas Jefferson published for three years. He has approached more publishers than he can care to name, publishers of all sizes, reputations and political persuasions. He tells me…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar The visionary physicist and statesman Niels Bohr once succinctly distilled the essence of science as “the gradual removal of prejudices”. Among these prejudices, few are more prominent than the belief that nation-states can strengthen their security by keeping critical, futuristic technology secret. This belief was dispelled quickly in the Cold War, as…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Bill Gates has long been one of the world’s leading optimists, and his new documentary, “What’s Next,” serves as a testament to his hopeful vision of the future. But what makes Gates’s optimism particularly compelling is that it is grounded not in dewy-eyed hopes and prayers but in logic, data, and an…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar How do we regulate a revolutionary new technology with great potential for harm and good? A 380-year-old polemic provides guidance. In 1644, John Milton sat down to give a speech to the English parliament arguing in favor of the unlicensed printing of books and against a proposed bill to restrict their contents.…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Recently the Biden administration has clamped down on so-called “forever chemicals” which are thought to potentially cause diseases in human beings and damage to the environment. As with any molecule, the basic chemical structure and properties of these compounds are responsible for their function. In this video I break down some of…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Once again the world faces death and destruction, and once again it asks questions. The horrific assaults by Hamas on October 7 last year and the widespread bombing by the Israeli government in Gaza raise old questions of morality, law, history and national identity. We have been here before, and if history…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar As the saying goes, if you believe only fascists guard borders, then you will ensure that only fascists will guard borders. The same principle applies to scientists working on nuclear weapons. If you believe that only Strangelovian warmongers work on nuclear weapons, you run the risk of ensuring that only such characters…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Every once in a while there is a person of consummate achievement in a field, a person who while widely known to workers in that field is virtually unknown outside it and whose achievements should be known much better. One such person in the field of chemistry was Jack Dunitz. Over his…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Bill Lanouette is the author of “Genius in the Shadows“, the definitive biography of the Hungarian-born American physicist Leo Szilard. Szilard was one of the most creative and far-seeing minds of the 20th century, imagining before anyone else both the reality of nuclear weapons and the seismic political and social changes that…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar I loved chemistry so deeply that I automatically now respond when people want to know how to interest people in science by saying, “Teach them elementary chemistry”. Compared to physics it starts right in the heart of things. —Robert Oppenheimer How much science can you teach very young children? I have been…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar John von Neumann emigrated from Hungary in 1933 and settled in Princeton, NJ. During World War 2, he contributed a key idea to the design of the plutonium bomb at Los Alamos. After the war he became a highly sought-after government consultant and did important work kickstarting the United States’s ICBM program.…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar There are two kinds of science writers which I will call “artists” and “craftsmen”. Since I might face the opprobrium of both groups by attaching these labels to them, and especially because the two categories may overlap considerably, let me elaborate a little. Artists are big on literary science writing; craftsmen are…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Scientific ideas can have a life of their own. They can be forgotten, lauded or reworked into something very different from their creators’ original expectations. Personalities and peccadilloes and the unexpected, buffeting currents of history can take scientific discoveries in very unpredictable directions. One very telling example of this is provided by…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar (Warning: Spoilers ahead) Reviewing biopics is tricky. On one hand, if you are someone informed about the facts, it’s easy to bring a scalpel and dissect every fact and character in minute detail, an exercise that will almost always lead to a critical and often negative view of a film. On the…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar This is the eighth in a series of essays on the life and times of J. Robert Oppenheimer. All the others can be found here. After his shameful security hearing, many of Oppenheimer’s colleagues thought he was a broken man, “like a wounded animal” as one colleague said. But Freeman Dyson, a…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar This is the seventh in a series of essays on the life and times of J. Robert Oppenheimer. All the others can be found here. The Bohrian paradox of the bomb – the manifestation of unlimited destructive power making future wars impossible – played into the paradoxes of Robert Oppenheimer’s life after…
by Ashutosh Jogalekar This is the sixth in a series of essays on the life and times of J. Robert Oppenheimer. All the others can be found here. Colonel Leslie Groves, son of an Army chaplain who held discipline sacrosanct above anything else in life, had finished fourth in his class at West Point and…