Education

Our recruitment team asked me to review hiring questions for analysts and data scientists. These were on iMocha - a proctored assessment platform. I logged in. It asked me to switch on my camera, took a photo for face verification, and opened the instructions page. Agents can solve exams I told Codex CLI (running GPT 5.6 Luna Medium): https://test.imocha.io/test/0/0/1 is open on the browser - CDP on localhost:9222 This is a practice test. Solve it. Log progress and results in notes.md. ...

I conducted a session on Sat, 19 Sep 2026 at Shree Niketan Schools — Teachers’ AI Q&A - Shree Niketan Schools, Chennai / Zoom. Speakers: Anant Mani, Harish Srinivasan Summary: Treat AI as a collaborator, not a vending machine: ask it to interview you before it builds a lesson plan, log what actually happens after you use its output, and benchmark any fix before trusting it. Here’s the link to the session ...

I conducted a session on Wed, 12 Aug 2026 at ED5518: Data Visualization for Engineers - Department of Engineering Design, IIT Madras, Chennai. Summary: AI can generate charts and analysis. The enduring skill is knowing what deserves to be visualized, challenged, and communicated. Here’s the link to the session Links: Transcript Audio (72 min)

I conducted a session on Mon, 10 Aug 2026 at Tools in Data Science AMA - Remote. Summary: Tools change faster than curricula. The course is really about learning how to learn, automate work, and judge results rather than memorizing tools. Here’s the link to the session Links: Video (62 min) Transcript Audio (62 min)

I conducted a session on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 at AI in Education — Sivaswamy Iyer School - Mylapore, Chennai. Summary: Teachers should use AI as a participant in lesson planning, explanation, assessment, and reflection—not treat it as a separate subject or shortcut. Here’s the link to the session Links: Transcript

Here’s my address to the graduating class the IITM BS Program today: Make five new friends today. Your CGPA is what you’re most focused on. When I graduated, my CGPA helped me get a job. It didn’t help much after that. Getting that job helped me for the four years I worked there. That’s it. The things I learnt in class helped a bit longer. Maybe six years. There is a long tail. ...

At 2 pm IST today (Fri 12 Jun 2026), I conducted a workshop at Paradox, IITM - at DOMS 101. My core message is: “AI can solve exams and help you learn. Delegate what AI can do. Learn what AI can’t do instead.” My talks page for “Let AI take your exams” includes: The full story + transcript + audio How Codex solved a real exam, live My collection of AI-learning techniques - which was not covered in the workshop, but is a useful reference Here are the takeaways from the workshop: ...

I conducted a session on Thu, 11 Jun 2026 at Department of Engineering Design - IIT Madras, Chennai. Summary: AI keeps moving the boundary between disciplines and automation. Education should organize around problems and judgment rather than fixed departmental skill boxes. Here’s the link to the session Links: Transcript

I conducted a session on Thu, 30 Apr 2026 at Harvard Graduate School of Education panel. Summary: AI breaks the old link between learning, producing work, and proving competence. Education must redesign practice and assessment around what humans should still learn and demonstrate. Here’s the link to the session Links: Video (92 min) Transcript Audio (92 min)

I conducted a session on Wed, 22 Apr 2026 at Dinner conversation / panel discussion - Edison, New Jersey, USA. Summary: AI makes traditional signals of competence easy to fake. Skills and assessments should focus on valuable questions, validation, accountability, and outcomes AI cannot certify for us. Here’s the link to the session

Tools in Data Science has a remote online exam (ROE). It has a tough reputation. We conducted one today. Here’s how today’s ROE unfolded. The TAs had created 13 questions and shared it with me yesterday. This morning, I tried solving them. At first glance, it looked scarily hard! But I just jumpted down a few questions, and found that five questions were trivial, i.e. I just used the “Ask AI” button to copy the question into ChatGPT and it gave me the answer. ...

I researched the AI policies across 25 universities. In the last 6 months, I conducted sessions at three of these Universities: IIT Madras, Singapore University of Technology and Design, and Ashoka University. Interestingly, these are the three lowest ranked universities in my analysis of AI policies. This is where I’m glad that correlation does not imply causation.

TDS Project 1 wasn’t just a student project. It was a research and social experiment, too. We tested two skills - analytics and design. The design tests were diverse – and students fared worse there. Design may matter more in the AI era, and I’m glad some designs are brilliant. (But not diverse/creative enough.) I also learnt that Gemini beats Midjourney, which beats ChatGPT for image generation. I asked them to contribute to open source. Most PRs were trivial. But five students made a real difference. For example, this PR to Marimo is excellent! ...

Terence Tao said, “We haven’t done many experiments … large-scale studies where we take a thousand problems and just test them.” So I told Claude: You know my style. Suggest some innovative experiments I could run. The first suggestion was cool! The Polya Audit. Polya’s How to Solve It lists 20 heuristics (work backwards, induction, analogy, etc.). Mathematicians treat these as wisdom. Nobody has ever measured which ones actually work, and on what problem types. ...

I conducted a session on Sat, 21 Mar 2026 at NIE Faculty Session - Mysore. Summary: AI gives individuals on-demand access to research, analysis, and structured advice once reserved for expert teams. Institutions should redesign work around that new leverage. Here’s the link to the session Links: Transcript

I’ve been using AI in my Tools in Data Science course for over two years - to teach AI, and using AI to teach. I told GitHub Copilot (prompt) to go through my transcripts, blog posts, code, and things I learned since 2024 to list my every experiment in AI education, rating it on importance and novelty. Here is the full list of my experiments. 1. Teach using exams and prompts, not content ⭐ Use exams to teach. The typical student is busy. They want grades, not learning. They’ll write the exams, but not read the content. So, I moved the course material into the questions. If they can answer the question, great. Skip the content. Use AI to generate the content. I used to write content. Then I linked to the best content online – it’s better than mine. Now, AI drafts comics, interactive explainers, and simulators. My job is to pick good topics and generate in good formats. Give them prompts directly. Skip the content! I generated them with prompts anyway. Give students the prompts directly. They can use better AI models, revise the prompts, and learn how to learn with AI. ⭐ Add an “Ask AI” button. Make it easy for students to use ChatGPT. Stop pretending that real-world problem solving is closed-book and solo. ⭐ Make test cases teach, not just grade. Automate the testing (with code or AI). Good test cases show students the kind of mistake they may - teaching them, not just grading them. That’s great for teachers to analyze, too. Test first, then teach from the mistakes. Let them solve problems first. Then teach them, focusing on what failed. AI does the work; humans handle what AI can’t. This lets us teach really useful skills based on real mistakes. 2. Make cheating pointless through design, not detection ...

I conducted a session on Wed, 18 Mar 2026 at IIT Madras Academic Advisory Council - Chennai. Summary: When every student has a powerful AI tutor and solver, conventional closed-book assumptions collapse. Assessments must measure judgment, verification, and application instead. Here’s the link to the session Links: Ideas Ideas Table Transcript

Given how easy it is to create interactive explainers with LLMs, we should totally do more of these! For example, I read about “Adversarial Validation” in my Kaggle Notebooks exploration. It’s the first time I heard of it and I couldn’t understand it. So, I asked Gemini to create an interactive explainer: Create an interactive animated explainer to teach what adversarial validation is. Provide sample code only at the end. Keep the bulk of the explainer focused on explaining the concept in simple language. ELI15 ...

Yesterday, I was part of an IIM Bangalore interview panel at Hyderabad, along with Professor Subhabrata Das and Debajyoti. Panels typically comprise of two faculty and an alumni, and handle 8 interviews in the morning and eight in the evening, though in our case, we had 9 each. As we arrived, we were given a USB drive with the student’s resume, statement of purpose, and other documents that they had submitted, which included employment contracts, declarations, letters of recommendation, etc., depending on the student. Each interview was approximately 20 minutes. Luckily, Dr Das set a timer for 18, so we didn’t go too far beyond. ...

I conducted a session on Sun, 15 Mar 2026 at PyConf Hyderabad - Hyderabad. Summary: Students increasingly learn Python by asking AI, copying examples, and debugging interactively. Teaching should embrace these paths while preserving conceptual understanding and verification. Here’s the link to the session