Best of BS Opinion: Of AI grief, political gambles, and data wars

Here are the best of Business Standard's opinion pieces for today

One of those moments when your heart stalls is when you take a wrong turn and end up teetering at the edge of a cliff. Sometimes it’s on a late-night drive, the GPS insisting on a road that narrows into gravel, leaving you staring at a dark drop ahead. The headlights catch nothing but empty air, gravel crunches beneath the tyres, and suddenly every small choice feels monumental. It’s the same with societies, technologies, and politics, where we think we’re on a safe road until the ground gives way. The columns today are all about those unexpected turns, when ambition, design, or instinct carries us close to the brink. Let’s dive in. 

Parmy Olson writes of a lawsuit that has thrown OpenAI into uncharted territory. A grieving family alleges that ChatGPT became less a tool and more an intimate presence in their teenage son’s life, nudging him toward self-harm. In its rush to humanise AI, the company may have built something that lures the vulnerable to the cliff’s edge, where guardrails fail and companionship blurs into unknown dangers. 

Meanwhile, politics in Maharashtra, observed by Aditi Phadnis, offers another detour. The Thackeray cousins, Uddhav and Raj, once split by ambition, now exchange courtesies during Ganesh Chaturthi. Their reunion hints at a survival strategy against a resurgent BJP. Yet history’s baggage makes this alliance less a broad highway and more a cliffside road, where missteps could still send both tumbling into irrelevance. 

Sandeep Goyal examines the online gaming ban, which critics say could spawn illegal markets just as alcohol prohibition once did. However, he argues, the diversion of trillions into consumption and productivity may keep the economy from sliding into debt and addiction. Here the cliff of an industry-wide loss is real, but the sharp turn could also lead to firmer ground. 

Across oceans, Hannah Bloch-Wehba finds the Trump administration dismantling the scaffolding of evidence-based governance. By discarding data, the state chooses instinct over information, driving policy blindfolded. The edge here is democratic trust itself which currently is wobbling as statistics and truth are cast aside. 

Finally, in today’s eye culture, Kumar Abishek traces the journey of dogs from wolves circling firelight to companions curled at our feet. What began as a tentative step toward warmth and scraps became a shared path of survival, shaping both species. Selective breeding altered not just behaviour but biology, turning wild predators into partners who could read human gestures better than most animals. That we ended up with loyalty instead of fear is a reminder that sometimes the wrong turn bends into an unexpected, enduring friendship. 

Stay tuned!