Jaspreet Bindra : Homo Promptus

Saturday was my last day at @AshokaUniv, where I teach a course on AI for their Young India Fellowship students. This was on vibe-coding, and one student used @GoogleAIStudio to vibe code a ‘spell-checker for @WhatsApp messages’ in the very two hours that @anujmagazine and I were teaching it! That one student was 22-year-old Sabari Venkat Sreenivas (@LinkedIn profile: linkedin.com/in/sabari-venk… ) Some students leave an impression because they have an unusual combination of courage, clarity and purpose. Sabari is one of them. Sabari is 100% visually impaired. But that is NOT the story. The story is what he has done, is doing, and what he is building. He has already lived a remarkable life for someone so young: recognised by Dr APJ Abdul Kalam & PM @narendramodi . He studied Political Science, International Studies, and is now at Ashoka. His refuses to see disability as a barrier. What really stayed with me, though, was how he spoke about AI. Many of us use AI to write , summarise, make slides, clean up documents. All good. But for Sabari, AI is not merely for productivity. It is independence. A poster can be ‘seen’; a PDF ‘read’ e; currency notes identified. Objects can be described, colours recognized, people identified. Small fish for the sighted, but for Sabari, they are dignity, autonomy and confidence. And then comes the even more impressive part. Sabari does'nt just use AI to live better; he wants to use AI to build. He is building an app called RizzVision: to make online fashion accessible for the blind. Simple things: What do I wear? What matches? Does this fit? Is this shoe aligned? Worn something inside out? Stain on my shirt? Do I look presentable for an interview? Ordinary questions for most of us, for him daily barriers to independence. Sabari is building an ‘auditory mirror’ : a way to know how you look, whether your clothing is appropriate, or something you may want to fix before stepping out. The 'mirror', a mobile app, speaks it aloud AI not just powers the product, it is impossible to do without AI Building a prototype with zero funding. Vibe-coding it with Claude using multimodal features of Google Gemini , with Chatgpt as a guide. Training on 400,000 images scrapped using AI. I have written often about the sheer possibilities AI throws up, and how ‘English becomes the new Coding’. Here AI is not just helping to consume capability but create it. AI seems to be all about hype, disruption & shiny demos. Then you meet a Sabari and remember what the best use of technology really is. Not spectacle, but agency. Not noise, but possibility. We at AI&Beyond will be standing with him to help realise the possibilities If you want to help Sabari build RizzVision with time, resources, credits, and money, please do reach out to me directly on DM. (Oh, Sabari taught me that ‘rizz’ is GenZ-speak for charisma!) @PramathSinha @ArchanaMuthappa @AshishDhawanTCF

Every great technology age eventually finds its device. The IC engine had the car, telecommunications the telephone, the information age the PC, and the internet age found its perfect vessel in the smartphone. Now, as we enter the inevitable Age of AI, the trillion-dollar question is: What is the defining gadget for the AI era? This question now hangs over one man more than any other: @ivesays (Jony Ive), the legendary @Apple designer and now collaborator with @OpenAI 's @sama The irony is rich: the designer who helped give us the #iPhone may now have to invent the thing that rescues us from living inside it! If he gets it right, he will not just design the next device, but the human habit. If the smart phone was the gadget that made us look down, his next creation will be the one that finally makes us look up again. I speculate on the definitive device of the AI era in the @EconomicTimes today @Utopiandevil @anujmagazine @ArchanaMuthappa @AIBeyondAI

Could not be prouder of my sister (soon to be Dr) @prernabindra Will be the first PhD in the family, that too from @Cambridge_Uni, in a subject which is so vitally important for the planet, and battling so many things that life has thrown at her. As she writes below, it takes a village, and several of them coalesced around her Standing taller as I write this, and remembering my mother, who would have been the proudest human on earth...

I honestly don’t think that President Trump is suffering from dementia. I think he’s actually enjoying it.

Elephants bathing in the Ganges, 1956

@prernabindra 😂😂

Amen. A fervent one

@virsanghvi @seemagoswami I like check in at most American hotels . When u arrive, the only thing they ask you “how many keys” followed by have a nice stay and elevator on your right ! In india little short of taking details about your dad and 10-15 minutes of useless conversations :-)

overheard a new insult: you have a short context window 💀

😂😂😂

😅

The Bengaluru Roadies #39: Jayanagara After @saffrontrail 's rather provocative post on X, saying that Whitefield was older than Jayanagar (which it is), I had to write about the latter! Whitefield, f I have written earlier about. (Her X post is here: x.com/saffrontrail/s…) Most reports suggest that Jayanagar was named after Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar, the last Maharaja of Mysore. Back in 1948, when Bangalore was bursting at its seams, city planners drew up a massive grid map and created what was then Asia's largest planned neighborhood. Named after the last Maharaja of Mysore, it was designed to be a utopian suburban retreat to celebrate India's recent independence ('Jaya' also translates to 'Victory'). Old Bangaloreans originally considered it the absolute end of the earth—getting an auto-rickshaw to venture 'all the way down there' was practically a wilderness expedition! The iconic Ashoka Pillar in 1st Block was erected by C. Rajagopalachari in 1948 specifically to mark the absolute southern boundary of the city. Today it sits squarely in the middle of bustling South Bengaluru, but back then, standing there literally meant 'Bangalore ends here, watch out for leopards! Today, it is a nostalgic symphony of rustling rain-tree canopies, the clinking of steel filter coffee tumblers, and a slow-paced old-world swagger. It smells intoxicatingly of freshly roasted coffee beans, damp earth, and fragrant jasmine strings from street-side flower sellers." Pro Tip: 4th Block Market Treasure Hunt is a street-shopper's labyrinth wrapping around the old BDA complex. Dig through the outer stalls to find gorgeous oxidized silver jewelry and traditional fabrics—bring your absolute A-game for bargaining. Another is the Sunset at Ranadheera Kanteerava Park: An evening stroll here is a cultural immersion. Catch the local uncles having heated political debates on the stone benches while the golden hour sunlight filters through the massive heritage trees. (I have recently relocated to the city of gardens and traffic, and what intrigues me most are the road names, each of which have a fascinating history. This series of posts will unravel the historical origin of the roads and localities in BLR.) By the way, on popular demand, I have started archiving all my Bangalore Roadies posts at blrroadies.substack.com  , in case you missed a few

There is a new epidemic in town, and it is what I term as Corporate Ghosting. And it is out of control. You engage with a executive for an assignment or sale. There are calls, Zooms and Teams galore, emails, WhatsApps, follow-ups. It looks like a decision is coming. Then suddenly: pin drop silence. No response. No closure. No decency. As if you never existed. Ghosting used to belong to the dating world. Now it has found a thriving home in the corporate world. Here is a radical idea: if the answer is no, say "No". “No” is professional, unambiguous, and the right thing to do. All deals do not have to close. Ghosting is cowardice dressed up as busyness. It does not make you look important. It makes you look unreliable, discourteous, and smaller than your title. Some very eminent people do this so regularly that I mockingly call it “earned ghosting,” as though status has given them the divine right to disappear, fame has given them the right to vanish. What bothers me more is the other 99% doing it too. Not realising that the world is round, we will meet again sometime for another business deal. And, this time, you will be much diminished. Not naming the people who have done this recently. They know who they are. Honest question: does this happen to others too, or is it just me? #corporateghosting #ghosting

@shervin @MELANIATRUMP @Figure_robot @adcock_brett Umm... which one is the robot? @Figure_robot ...

Historic moment at the White House with First Lady @MELANIATRUMP and @Figure_robot at FLOTUS’ Fostering the Future Together AI Summit with 50 First Ladies and Spouses. Congrats to @adcock_brett and the entire Figure team. First Humanoid Robot in the White House.

@aarna_atri I stand corrected :-)

@j_bindra Haha...mostly alright but Mysore silks arent heavy and they are smooth dont make noise!

The Bengaluru Roadies #38: Malleshwaram How can you write about roads and localities in BLR and not talk about one of the OGs: Malleshwaram? It is named after the 17th-century Kadu Malleshwara Temple: literally 'Lord Shiva of the Forest'—yes, this was once a jungle, where tigers used to roam! Another location born out of absolute tragedy of the plague, Malleshwaram was the ultimate 1898 glow-up. When a devastating bubonic plague ravaged the cramped, rat-infested petes of old Bangalore, city planners hit the panic button and carved out this leafy, grid-patterned utopia as a 'hygienic' haven. It quickly transformed from a literal tiger-roaming forest—once owned by Maratha king Shivaji's half-brother—into the intellectual, cultural, and filter-coffee-guzzling epicenter of the city. Did you know an entire ancient temple was hidden underground here until 1997? While excavating a vacant plot, workers accidentally unearthed the Dakshinamukha Nandi Tirtha—a buried, mystical shrine where a stone bull continuously pours a stream of pristine water onto a Shiva linga from an unknown source. You can actually step below street level into the once-buried temple to marvel at the water-pouring stone bull. The absolute best time to go is 7:00 AM, just as the morning chants echo off the cool stone walls. Tigers roamed here yesterday, but today it is a glorious sensory collision of roasting filter coffee beans, damp pavement, fresh jasmine strings, and camphor, all set to the soundtrack of ringing temple bells and the rustle of heavy Mysore silk." (I have recently relocated to the city of gardens and traffic, and what intrigues me most are the road names, each of which have a fascinating history. This series of posts will unravel the historical origin of the roads and localities in BLR. By the way, on popular demand, I have started archiving all my Bangalore Roadies posts at blrroadies.substack.com , in case you missed a few

Amen

OMG who made this😭😂🤣

@warikoo @Codie_Sanchez Plus, there is no such thing as a 'quick' call, is there? So, ditto.

@Codie_Sanchez My goto reply when people ask for a "quick call" is "I prefer emails" People think I am being rude. I am just encouraging clarity!

You'll think better with a pen in your hand.

Here is what I wrote on #churchstreet in my BLR Roadies series: x.com/j_bindra/statu… The Bengaluru Roadies #33: Church Street The Church was St. Mark's Cathedral, and the street the leafy route for British officers heading to Sunday service. Do you know that this Street features a unique pavement design inspired by Kasuti, a traditional Karnataka folk embroidery form, implemented during its 2017–2018 redevelopment (shown in the picture below). This aesthetic, using patterned granite cobblestones, honours the local heritage, improves pedestrianization, and acts as a traffic-calming measure. Before it became ground zero for weekend bar-hopping and bibliophiles, Church Street was literally just a quiet, tree-lined commute for the British cantonment elite heading to pray. Imagine horse-drawn carriages kicking up dust exactly where techies now kick back with craft beers! Over the decades, those sleepy colonial bungalows were swallowed by neon signs and pub facades, hilariously transforming a pious pathway into Bengaluru's ultimate, unapologetic cultural playground. While it's famous as India's literary street today, its biggest empire started on the concrete: Mayi Gowda, an engineering drop-out, began selling second-hand books right on the Church Street pavements in 2001 before buying the spaces that became the legendary, towering Blossom Book House. Special thanks to my student at @AshokaUniv , Pragati Madhogarhia , for enlightening me on the Kasuti embroidery on the cobble stones; I had never noticed it on my many visits there. Next time, I will! (I have recently relocated to the city of gardens and traffic, and what intrigues me most are the road names, each of which have a fascinating history. This series of posts will unravel the historical origin of the roads and localities in BLR.) By the way, on popular demand, I have started archiving all my Bangalore Roadies posts at blrroadies.substack.com  , in case you missed a few.