I recently learned about a new book titled “Tamil Computing” by Dr. R. Ponnusamy. It sparked my own long-held desire to write a book on Malayalam Computing, which friends have encouraged me to publish. I am still not convinced that a “printed book” is a good idea to present this topic yet. Not to mention the amount of time it require for such initiatives. So, I was intrigued by this book promptly purchased a copy from amazon.
However, once I started flipping through the book, a sense of unease settled in. Most of the sentences did not make any sense and long paragraphs of text missed substance but just a fluent flow of words. I was reluctant to believe that I bought a book that is mostly an output of generative AI. So I spent time some more time to go through the book, and I am very disappointed to share that the content appears heavily reliant on generative AI and machine translation, with a disregard for reader investment.
I am providing only a few examples here. Here is a section that introduces what is a character or grapheme.
The book has so many sections that has the cliche words the gen-AI systems like ChatGPT repeats in its output.
The typesetting is poor, with low-resolution, skewed images for Tamil illustrations, inconsistent fonts (including the default Windows Tamil font and random selections), and mangled mathematical notation. A simple proofreading process could have rectified these issues.
The “About the Book” section on the back cover claims suitability for students, academics, and researchers. I strongly disagree.
There are some python code examples in the book. I am not explaining how many things went wrong in the below example.
It’s difficult to reconcile this work with the credentials of Dr. R. Ponnusamy, a professor with extensive experience and current dean of the computer science and engineering department at the Chennai Institute of Technology.
I’m not opposed to using generative AI to enhance readability, but the author should retain control and ownership of the content.
Why should I bother to read the content that the author did not want to write themself?
Update - June 2, 2024
A few days later I published this blog post, Dr Ponnusamy emailed me asking to withdraw the review and collaborate with him to review the fixes he plans to do. Same email came from another person named Padmavathy Ponnusamy, I assume this person is somebody close to him. Padmavathy Ponnusamy commented in this blogpost too, but in a very negative tone. Dr Ponnusamy in LinkedIn said that “Sometimes for the sake of money people like you also working for some one. Please write a book on Malayalam Computing if you have the knowledge. Book written prior to the arrival of ChatGpt. Thanks for popularise my book. "
I was traveling and couple of days later I read another email talking about discussing before involving lawers etc. A few days later, I came to know that Dr Ponnusamy had contacted the legal team of my employer too. However, I did not respond to any of these intimidation tactics. Anyway, The book “Tamil Computing” is no longer available in Amazon or other online platforms.
Update - August 6, 2024
The book is back to online stores.