Elon Musk’s son also named Chandrasekhar, Union IT minister discovers in UK

London: Union IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who is in the UK to represent India at the AI Safety Summit, bumped into Tesla CEO Elon Musk and discovered a new namesake in his son.

Taking to Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, the Minister of State for Entrepreneurship, Skill Development, Electronics and Technology posted that the tech billionaire shared that his son with tech venture capitalist Shivon Zilis has the middle name “Chandrasekhar”, after Nobel laureate Professor Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

'Look who I bumped into at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, UK,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar tweeted along with his picture with Musk from the encounter.

'Elon Musk shared that his son with Shivon Zilis has a middle name ‘Chandrasekhar’ – named after 1983 Nobel physicist Prof S. Chandrasekhar,” he said.

The Indian astrophysicist won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars.

'Haha, yes, that’s true. We call him Sekhar for short, but the name was chosen in honour of our children’s heritage and the amazing Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar,” responded Zilis to Chandrasekhar’s post.

Chandrasekhar has joined representatives from around the world at the artificial intelligence (AI) safety meet hosted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire – the home of modern computing where celebrated British mathematician Alan Turing’s team broke the Enigma code during the Second World War.

He has held a series of meetings on the sidelines of the summit, including with UK Minister of State for AI and Intellectual Property Jonathan Camrose and Australian Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic.

“Discussed how decision about the future of tech should not be left to big tech houses and that the governments should continue to work together and agree upon a framework of do’s & don’ts for ensuring safety and trust of users on the internet,” the minister said of his meeting with Camrose.

“Discussed about how Indian diaspora is significantly adding to the talent pool of Australia and highlighted the potential of India-Australia partnership in shaping the future of technology,” he said, with reference to his meeting with Husic.

On Wednesday, day one of the two-day summit, Chandrasekhar addressed the opening plenary session to lay out India's vision for innovative technology as the driving force of economic growth.

'For us, all things digital, the digital economy, the innovation ecosystem, represents real bread and butter, real goals and real objectives. Artificial intelligence for us, as we see it, is a kinetic enabler of the already accelerating, already expanding digital economy, innovation, growth and governance,” said the minister and former tech investor.

On Thursday, Sunak led the talks as he hailed the Bletchley Declaration signed on day one of the two-day meet as a “landmark” agreement between 28 countries, including India.

“The first-ever global AI Safety Summit led by the UK has already seen major AI powers sign up to the landmark Bletchley Declaration, agreeing on the shared responsibility to address the risks and urgently work together on frontier AI safety and research. The UK has led the way in this global conversation on AI safety, but no one country can tackle the risks alone,” he said.