Nepal’s AI budget: The right instinct, and the trap inside it

AI is not a simple software product. It looks much more like an electricity grid, and whoever does not own the foundation must rent it forever.

Try filing your tax returns in the final week of Asar, and you will get the taste. You log in to the portal of the Inland Revenue Department after lunch. It hangs. You reload. It still hangs. During the few moments of agony between logging in, paying the taxes and printing the receipt, you have consumed two cups of tea, had a few small meltdowns and got the old, familiar feeling that the government is not on your side. Now, visualise several million people doing the same thing, on the same day. You now know how we sit on the digital map.