Last week at VizChitra, I ran a “Dialogue” session. A new format for me. I usually speak 80% in my workshops. In this dialog, I spoke 20%. The group discussed. PART A I showed 6 charts and said, “Pick the best.” Then I shared the audience & purpose and asked: “For THIS audience and purpose, will you publish, fix, or kill it?” INSIGHT: almost no one said, “Ship”. That’s good – these were all drafts. ...
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
I conducted a session on Thu, 02 Jul 2026 at PGP-BA Multivariate Data Analysis — Term 4 - IIM Bangalore. Summary: AI makes sophisticated analytical methods cheap and accessible. The scarce skill becomes choosing the right analysis, questioning assumptions, and judging whether results matter. Here’s the link to the session Links: Transcript Audio (185 min)
For thirty years, we cleaned data for humans. Now, agents are reading it. What do we do differently? On Tue 𝟳 Jul 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲, 𝟮-𝟲pm IST, I’m running a Fifth Elephant workshop: “When Data is for Agents, Not Humans”. I have a few theories we’ll be testing on your data. Like: Tools beat tables. Agents prefers functions over tables they can read. Logs beat docs. Logs show actual usage - not how we’re supposed to use it. Messy beats clean. Agents can do clean & join data. You just need descriptions. ...
The theme of yesterday’s workshop for the IIM Alumni at Singapore was Tools and Workflows was: Agents are getting smarter, so they know what to do. Tools agents can use are growing and are more powerful. This combinatorial explosion creates explosive possibilites. This workshop covered the following six workflows: Leverage transcripts. Use Google AI Studio to transcribe non-sensitive recordings with a reusable “don’t miss anything” prompt. AI Studio’s record button is a ready-to-use transcriber. Simplify dense text as a comic, an infographic, a story. Image generation is now a tool call an agent runs for you. Then compress it as AVIF on Squoosh before you email it to a thousand people. Verify - cheaply. Paste one suffix: “Break this into key claims, mark certainty, flag the five highest-risk ones, and tell me how to verify or falsify each.” Convert to a skill to automate. Cross-checking with multiple models took error from 14% to 0.7%. Skills are assets. A skill tells the agent “here’s how I do stuff.” Build them slowly, edit them weekly, and they compound for years. No skills support in your tool? Keep them as copy-pasteable prompts. Brainstorm by forcing range. Ban the five obvious ideas; borrow from unrelated domains; smash two random concepts together with the Ideator. Hallucination is a feature when you’re being creative. Schedule tasks. Weekly regulatory scans, daily meeting prep, market briefings - and even an “unreasonable gesture” nudge. As AI hides the tech, human relationships gain value. Here’s the talk video and full story + transcript. ...
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
On Sat 13 Jun 2026 at 3 pm, I conducted an online workshop on Data Stories with AI. Registration link: https://forms.gle/dNkUxtJ2PVqNMNcE9 In this workshop, the audience used ChatGPT and Claude, mostly, to: Find data Analyze it Extract insights Visualize as stories It’s a data visualization using AI workshop for journalists - but you don’t need to know data, visualization, journalism, or even technology. But this is a practical workshop. You’ll be doing stuff and sharing your results. ...
I conducted a session on Sat, 23 May 2026 at IIM Alumni Singapore — AI Unboxed (1/4). Summary: AI performance depends less on clever prompts than on context. Give models the right goals, examples, constraints, history, and tools so they can act effectively. Here’s the link to the session Links: Video (126 min) Transcript Audio (119 min)
I conducted a session on Fri, 15 May 2026 at Gramener All Hands - Remote. Summary: Software is shifting from fixed interfaces and workflows to agents that interpret goals and choose actions dynamically. Products should be designed around delegated outcomes. Here’s the link to the session
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
Lyria (Gemini’s new “Create Song” feature) is helping me in new ways. Earlier this week, it created a jingle for my talk. Yesterday I ran an AI Workshop for IAS officers. As part of that, I asked Gemini: Create a soulful vote of thanks (with patriotic Indian music playing in the background) naming each of these people. … and listed each person in the workshop. The song began… (Listen to the song) … with these lyrics: ...
I deliver about 3-5 talks a month and usually prepare for them. Thanks to AI (but even otherwise), I have a steady stream of new content. So, I just to assemble the story. For example, in my TEDx Whitefield talk “Prisoners of Birth”, I shared the impact of name, gender, lineage, place, and time of birth. I didn’t execute any new analysis. I just cherry-picked disparate analyses into a theme. (Took me three days to plan, though.) ...
I conducted a session on Thu, 26 Mar 2026 at #hackoftheday. Summary: Journalists can use AI to turn curiosity into rapid experiments and explainers. The machine accelerates research and production; editorial judgment decides what is worth publishing. Here’s the link to the session
I spoke today on Design in the Age of Infinite Generativity at the Chennai Design Festival. You can read about the talk in the link about. This post is about my preparation. Tue 10 Mar 2026. Damn! Palani’s asked for the topic. Claude, what should I talk about!? Fri 20 Mar 2026. ChatGPT, tell me who the other speaker are. Fri 20 Mar 2026. Oh, I’ll just pull a bunch of links, use browser tabs as slides, create some slide dividers, and I’m ready! Sat 21 Mar 2026 1:00 pm. I’m NOT ready! The story doesn’t flow. It’s rubbish. Sat 21 Mar 2026 3:00 pm. Let me drop some of the boring ones. I just have 15 minutes. Sat 22 Mar 2026 3:30 pm. Oh, maybe I should listen to what the others are saying, just… you know… … and that proved the best decision ever, because Senthil of Payir showed a re-usable fabric calendar that converts into a bag. It was a fantastic idea, so I got curious. ...
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 was at a panel on AI in SDLC at PyConf. Here’s the summary of my advice: Process Make AI your entire SDLC loop. Record client calls, feed them to a coding agent to directly build & deploy the solution. Record your prompts, run post-mortems, and distill them into SKILLS.md files for reuse. Prompting Ask AI to make output more reviewable. Don’t waste time reviewing unclear output. Prefer directional feedback (feeling, emotion, intent) over implementational. Also give AI freedom to do things its way. Learn from that - you’ll be surprised. Learning ...
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
I conducted a session on Wed, 18 Mar 2026 at Office of Institutional Advancement, IIT Madras - Chennai. Summary: AI can automate research, outreach, personalization, and analysis in institutional advancement. The largest gains come from redesigning workflows rather than adding a chatbot. Here’s the link to the session Links: Use Cases Transcript