Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Live
Can Thackeray continue as Sena prez?
MUMBAI: With the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) silence on the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s request to allow the party to hold internal elections or maintain status quo so that Uddhav Thackeray can continue as party president, a big question mark hangs over Thackeray’s tenure. His term ends on January 23.
Meanwhile, arguments by both the warring factions vis-àvis their claim to the name and party symbol of the pre-split Shiv Sena have concluded. The ECI will hear the case next on January 30, following which a final order is expected in February.
When asked about the stalemate regarding the post of party president, party leader Anil Parab insisted that Thackeray would continue in the post since there was no specific directive by the ECI. “Uddhav Thackeray is and will be the Shiv Sena party president for party workers and leaders,” he told the media. “For party workers, there is no need of any permission. We sought the ECI’s permission only to comply with the legal formalities.”
The ECI, on Friday, while hearing the Shiv Sena party symbol matter, asked the Thackeray and Shinde factions to submit their written replies in seven days from January 23 and scheduled the next hearing for January 30. “Our counsel argued that the party is not just MPs and MLAs but consists of the National Executive and the party organisation, and we have the majority in this,” said Parab. “The Shinde faction cited the
Sadiq Ali case (the Congress split in 1969), but we told the ECI that only when there is an equal split in the party are the number of elected representatives taken into consideration. In this case, there has been no split; some members have defected. The party organisation is with Uddhav Thackeray.”
Parab said that after the 2018 National Executive meeting, no one had raised any questions on the re-election of Uddhav Thackeray.
“Now suddenly, after the Shinde faction left the party, they are raising questions,” he said. “There is no provision of the Mukhya Neta (Chief Leader) post in the Shiv Sena constitution. So CM Eknath Shinde electing himself in that post is invalid and unconstitutional.
There is no split in the party, and the bow-and-arrow symbol and the name of the party will be with us.” Nihar Thackeray, counsel for the Shinde faction, told the media in Delhi that it argued before the ECI that it was the real Shiv Sena, as the majority of elected representatives were with it. “The recognition of an elected party depends on the votes it receives. As such, if the maximum elected representatives are with us, we are the real party. We expect a good judgement from the ECI,” he said.
In Mumbai, Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA Aaditya Thackeray expressed his anger at the ECI stretching the hearing for so long. “The Shiv Sena belongs to Hindu Hruday Samrat Shiv Sena Pramukh Balasaheb Thackeray and party president Uddhav Thackeray and all Shiv Sainiks. The decision will be in our favour, as the truth is with us. But how long will the unconstitutional CM and the government continue?” asked Aaditya.
THE ECI, ON FRIDAY ASKED THE THACKERAY AND SHINDE FACTIONS TO SUBMIT THEIR WRITTEN REPLIES IN SEVEN DAYS
That ChatGPT-3, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered chatbot which made its debut last year has gotten exponentially smarter is now blindingly obvious. What is clear as well is that it is incredibly disruptive and has started to create ethical questions we must face up to. Nature magazine reported on Thursday that at least four scientific papers listed ChatGPT-3 as a co-author. Those in the scientific community feel conflicted on whether a piece of software ought to be credited as an author.
The output ChatGPT-3 generates is sufficiently original to bypass plagiarism detectors scientific papers are put through. And all contemporary scientific papers are checked to see if the authors have deployed AI-powered software to create the output. Turns out, these papers bypass those tools as well. In that case, why ChatGPT shouldn’t be conferred with co-author status, becomes a valid question.
A Mumbai-based computer sciences researcher at a premier research institute thinks this a naïve argument. “To offer credit to software for research output and treating it as a human makes no sense to me.” His sentiment and reasons are echoed by N Dayasindhu, CEO of Itihaasa.com and co-author of Against All Odds: The IT Story of India. “I would list AI and machine learning (AI/ML) tools such as ChatGPT in the methodology section of a paper or book with a description of where they were used. I will not acknowledge it as a co-author. The way I see it, authors in academic papers are the actors who develop a theory or validate theory with experiments and empirical tests. I don’t think software such as ChatGPT does either now.”
How are we to cope with the fact that it passes plagiarism detectors and AI tests to sound authentic and human-like? “Plagiarism tests check for originality and not scientific truth. So, I am unsurprised ChatGPT passes such tests,” says Dayasindhu. The Mumbai-based researcher too concurs with Dayasindhu on this.
“In fact, I encourage my students as well to deploy AI-based tools to write code,” he says and points to CoPilot This is an automated code writing tool from GitHub, the open-source subsidiary of Microsoft. With something such as this, his students who know the rules of coding, can find the right prompts, create code and cut the time spent on a project by up to 55%. But he admits to feeling a bit fuzzy about the ethics on an altogether different note.
This is because the software can write the code because it has “learnt to write” on the basis of what humans created over years. Many of them earned their living off it by placing copyright restrictions. But as things are, there is no way either he or his students can tell whether CoPilot that exists in its current avatar has used copyrighted code or stuck with using only open-source code that other creators placed in the public domain.
To put that in perspective, he suggests we look at yet another AI-based engine, Dall-E 2. This was built to create visuals. All a user has to do is describe what they want, the style of the image, and pay $0.020 (Rs 1.6 at current exchange rates) to generate a high-quality image. “Is this fair to someone who spent a few years of their life learning to create art? For that matter, as ChatGPT begins to get better and learns to mimick writers who invested time on the craft, I have an ethical issue with even the idea that these artists who have invested time and effort, can be done away with,” argues the Mumbai researcher.
But, he goes on to point out, “I use these tools so I get creative time. This is the realm artists operate in.” Personally, I hear the merit in his argument because I had attempted to push the boundaries of ChatGPT on these pages in September last year with an attempt to write political commentary. While I thought the outcome was pretty-darned good, the editor’s bullshit detector was high.
Minus plagiarism detectors or tools to detect AI, she figured something was off. The piece was sent back to me with a note which said that in as many words. I had to re-work the piece completely before it got published.