Best of BS Opinion: When smooth systems are hiding fragile realities

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

There’s something hypnotic about watching those short videos that take you through a plane’s cockpit at night. The dials glow, the engines hum, and you imagine the aircraft gliding smoothly on autopilot. No turbulence, no touch of human hand, just flawless flight. But somewhere, off-camera, a pilot stays awake. Because autopilot isn’t trust, it’s delegation. It’s efficient, but never infallible. That’s the mood of our times. We’ve built systems that run smoother than ever, yet beneath all that sleek control lies fragility. The autopilot works beautifully, until it doesn’t. Let’s dive in. 

Artificial intelligence, says Kenneth Rogoff, has become the economic autopilot of the century. It is sleek, promising, and dangerously overtrusted. It might boost productivity and lift markets, but it won’t rescue ageing economies drowning in debt. Power constraints, displaced workers, and widening inequality will keep the turbulence coming. The real winners will be capital, not labour. Governments counting on AI to refill their coffers may find they’ve mistaken acceleration for altitude. 

Meanwhile, Devangshu Datta takes us to Visakhapatnam, where Google’s $15 billion data centre hums like a futuristic engine room. India’s bid to plug into the AI grid mirrors the global buildout. Yet some economists warn that this might be a mirage of motion. Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu believes only about five per cent of US tasks can even profitably go autopilot in the next decade. The risk? We’re flooring the throttle on hype, not horsepower. 

Leadership, too, can fall for the illusion of control. R Gopalakrishnan reminds us that true leaders don’t need to yank the wheel to prove they’re flying better. Criticising predecessors or teams may feel like asserting command, but it erodes trust faster than turbulence. Leadership isn’t about dramatic take-offs, it’s about steady hands when the clouds roll in. 

And in geopolitics, James Stavridis notes, autopilot diplomacy is a myth. The Gaza ceasefire may look like progress, but Kissinger’s old warning rings true: every Middle East solution is merely a ticket to the next problem. This truce, brokered under Donald Trump, demands vigilant maintenance, from joint task forces to intelligence bridges and international coalitions. The aim is stability without ground troops, but peace, like any machine, runs only as long as its operators stay alert. 

Finally, Atanu Biswas lands us in pop culture, tracing Diwali’s cinematic glow from The River to The Office to Virdee. Each retelling refines the algorithm of cultural understanding. It’s taken decades, but the festival now shines in New York’s public holidays and British living rooms alike, proof that even the cultural autopilot learns, eventually, to steer right.  Stay tuned!