For 37 days, AI will be a 4-lettered word

India's a liberal democracy where speaking is easy, shouting easier, and opinionating easiest. But effective immediately, an executive order has been passed effective from Feb 22 that only AI specialists, computer engineers, and those who can tell the difference between supervised and unsupervised learning without looking more than 20% clueless will be allowed to talk about AI until Mar 30. Everyone else - journalists, politicians, RWA uncles and that autowala - must shut up on the subject; else....

Penalties for flouting this rule will be serious. First-time offence: forced to watch a 12-hr lecture on back-propagation by an UGC-approved MeitY bureaucrat. Second-time: forced to watch an 18-hr lecture on bias and variance trade-off by an UGC-approved MeitY bureaucrat. Third-time: permanent exile to a server farm in Udupi, Karnataka - and by 'server farm' we mean a training centre where you'll be trained to serve dosa, idli, vada and filter coffee. 'We had to draw the line,' explained one official, 'when an influencer claimed AI was best tackled with almond milk.' AI specialists are understandably thrilled. For once, their jargon will be heard and understood without interruption and pretence. So, until Mar 30, if you feel the urge to say 'AI will change everything', zip it. Unless you can code in Python, your opinion is now contraband.