‘AI Teacher’ Sophie, Elon’s desi heir and the new Indian-American wildcard

Hello and welcome to the 70th edition of the Weekly Vine, a number usually associated with a politician becoming a youth icon. In this week’s edition, we define what a robot is, explain why “kill them all” is the norm for American foreign policy, discuss Elon’s desi revelation on Nikhil Kamath’s podcast, examine the emergence of Nalin Hailey as a voice of Gen Z angst, and explore the off-platform Martians theory.

‘AI Teacher’ Sophie

There was much hilarity on the internet recently over a ChatGPT-mounted mannequin labelled an “AI teacher,” but it raised a more interesting question: how does one actually define a robot? Does it have to help Luke Skywalker blow up the Death Star? Search for its girlfriend while looking adorable? Travel back in time to save or kill John Connor? Or simply resemble Shah Rukh Khan or Rajinikanth if the script demands it?

So, we built a Robo-Meter — six simple scales that decide how “robotic” something really is.

• Embodiment: Does it have a physical body?
  • Sensing: Does it perceive anything meaningfully?
  • Actuation: Can it move or manipulate?
  • Autonomy: Can it make decisions?
  • Programmability: Can software change its behaviour?
  • Interaction: Can it communicate or collaborate?

Scorecard in hand, R2-D2 lands at 51/60, C-3PO at 49/60, the T-800 at 51/60, and Bulandshahr’s Sophie at a modest 19/60.

But the uncomfortable question that lingers is whether we are truly better than robots. Isaac Asimov imagined machines that placed human life first, obeyed responsibly, and acted with restraint. Yet the reaction to Sophie — a student’s experiment powered by a speaker and a chatbot — showed the opposite. Sophie simply responded to inputs. The internet responded with synchronised mockery, identical jokes and the same borrowed certainty. The machine behaved mechanically, but so did the humans.

What should have been a moment of curiosity turned into a performance scripted by trends and algorithms. Sophie wasn’t the anomaly. We were. And the only real spark of originality in the whole saga came from a boy trying to build something new while the rest of us behaved exactly like the robots we claim to be superior to.

Read: Is Sophie a robot, or are we?

Kill them all

There has been the usual pearl-clutching in Washington circles — the same circles that came up with vaguely smart-sounding terms like “rules-based international order” — over Pete Hegseth’s “Kill Them All” order in the Caribbean. Ostensibly, this was the first time someone in Washington told a military team to wipe out survivors. While the White House is trying to pass on the blame to the armed forces, the real question is why American commentators are pretending this is the first time.

Long before precision strikes and targeting matrices, Theodore Roosevelt was sending marines across the Caribbean whenever Washington felt “stability” needed enforcing. Dwight Eisenhower toppled governments in Iran and Guatemala. John Kennedy green-lit sabotage campaigns. Lyndon Johnson escalated covert war like it was a budget line item. The language changed; the instinct didn’t.

The modern era just polished the method. Bill Clinton introduced the aesthetic of surgical force. George W. Bush globalised the battlefield. Barack Obama bureaucratised killing. Donald Trump tore up the paperwork. Pete Hegseth simply inherited a machine built to act first and justify later.

So the shock isn’t that America killed suspected traffickers. It’s that the order, for once, wasn’t wrapped in euphemisms like “degrading networks” or “neutralising maritime threats.” The Caribbean strike is not an aberration. It’s the mask slipping — a glimpse of the foreign-policy reflex America usually hides behind legalese, acronyms and very solemn press briefings. The Monroe Doctrine was based on telling Europe they had no right to mess with the New World: the Americans. The Trump Doctrine, on the other hand, is much simpler: we are America, b*****. That basically means doing whatever one wants.

Read: Why “kill them” is a feature of American cowboy justice

Elon’s desi heir

Nikhil Kamath’s podcast with Elon Musk was illuminating — or at least as illuminating as two over-indulged tech bros can be when they start admiring each other’s brainwaves. But one detail cut through the noise: Elon Musk has a desi heir.

Now, Musk has 14 children — enough to populate a mid-sized colony on Mars — but only one of them is 1/8th Indian. The child in question is Strider Sirius Sekhar, born in 2021 to Shivon Zilis. And that middle name, “Sekhar,” isn’t a random flourish from Musk’s cosmic baby-name generator. It is a deliberate tribute to one of the greatest astrophysicists in human history: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

So who was Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar?

Simply put, one of the finest scientific minds of the 20th century. Born in Lahore in 1910, Chandrasekhar reshaped our understanding of how stars live, die and collapse. His most famous contribution — the Chandrasekhar Limit — established the maximum mass a white dwarf star can have before it collapses under its own gravity. That one calculation changed astrophysics forever. It told us why some stars explode as supernovae, why others become neutron stars or black holes, and why the universe is structured the way it is.

For this, Chandrasekhar won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics, cementing his place in the cosmic hall of fame. His work wasn’t just elegant mathematics; it was the foundation on which modern stellar physics is built.

That’s why “Sekhar” matters. In a family where names often read like sci-fi passwords, this one is rooted in actual scientific legacy. And the connection flows through Shivon Zilis herself — half-Indian, Yale-educated and one of the most quietly influential thinkers in Musk’s inner circle.

So yes, Strider Sirius Sekhar is no ordinary Musk baby. He is the lone Musk child whose name carries a piece of India’s intellectual sky — a small tribute hidden inside a very large, very unusual family constellation.

Read: A cheat-sheet to Elon’s huge family

The new Indian-American wildcard

Political fame in America usually follows a predictable route — win something, lose something, say something outrageous, repeat. Nalin Haley has done none of that. He has no office, no campaign, no policy platform and no carefully curated persona. And yet he has become a strangely persistent presence in US politics, floating through news cycles with the stubborn regularity of a chronic push notification.

The reason is embarrassingly simple: he breaks every pattern the political class expects from someone in his position. He is the son of a major national figure, but he doesn’t behave like political royalty. He doesn’t repeat his mother’s talking points, doesn’t cushion her controversies, and doesn’t play the polite heir-apparent waiting for his turn. Instead, he delivers blunt, unscripted commentary that lands in the middle of Republican debates like a loose spark in a dry field.

That unpredictability makes him irresistible to both sides. Conservatives amplify him because he sounds like their kids — disillusioned, overeducated, underemployed, suspicious of globalisation and allergic to political theatre. Liberals amplify him because his criticism often lands uncomfortably close to the party establishment he comes from. And the media amplifies him because he is the rare political family member who speaks like he isn’t being managed.

He keeps becoming news because he keeps violating the unspoken rule of political dynasties: don’t contradict the narrative. Nalin contradicts it repeatedly — on immigration, on foreign-worker programmes, on economic anxiety, on generational disillusionment. Every time he does it, the story resets.

Add to that his public disagreements with high-profile conservatives, his refusal to adopt any ideological “brand,” and his insistence that he represents no one but his own frustrated cohort — and you get someone who is not a celebrity, not a politician, not an influencer, but still constantly in the bloodstream of American politics.

Read: The new Indian-American wildcard

Postscript by Prasad Sanyal: The off-platform Martians theory

Every now and then a theory wanders out of the savannahs of LinkedIn, a place where confidence is abundant and evidence is optional. The latest one suggests that on-platform users behave like Earthlings and off-platform users behave like Martians, as if switching apps triggers a neurological reboot and possibly a change in atmospheric requirements.

Apparently, if you are reading a publisher’s app, you are an Earthling. If you are following a trend on YouTube or Instagram, you are a Martian. If you do both in the same hour, you are a hybrid species and should probably not be disturbed. What a ridiculous thought.

Read full article.

END OF ARTICLE