From Weekly Boy to Falcon Flight: Learning Resilience

Dear Parents

Today morning, while I was walking, I saw a boy around 15 years old dropping milk packets door to door. It was raining and he was totally drenched. I’m sure he gets ready for school after this morning job. I am truly admired by his commitment and striving nature.

During our days, there was a concept of a “weekly boy.” The idea was that every week, a poor or unaffordable boy (mostly male, as I observed) would go to 7 different sponsored houses for lunch—one per day—and this process would repeat every week. Many times, they couldn’t afford dinner. A few of my own relatives went through this process and still completed their education.

Look at the ambiguity in their lives. You couldn’t demand what you wanted. You couldn’t expect timely lunch. You couldn’t expect respect—it all depended on the emotional state of the house on that particular day. You couldn’t even expect a full lunch during month-ends, as sponsors themselves would struggle when rations ran low. You had to drop your ego completely. Many times, sponsors demanded chores in return, and you had to fulfill those obligations regardless of your pain or pleasure. You visited your parents once in a season if you were away from your village. You studied under dim lights if you were lucky—but mostly under kerosene lamps.

In contrast, today’s overprotective parents track their children minute to minute. In spite of this, a few children still make mistakes and depend on parents for everything.

I still remember during my college days, I traveled alone over 1200 km one way—with just one small bag, no mobile phone, less than ₹500 in my pocket, no reservation, changing three trains, standing next to the bathroom in unreserved compartments—just to apply to a few universities across four different states. That pain is imprinted deep in my memory and comes out in different forms when dealing with my students and children. I become emotional when someone misuses their God-given gifts or misuses their opportunities.

In nature, a few are gifted with all three: resources, intelligence, and support. But more than 80% of people don’t get even one of these three. If someone has all three but doesn’t leverage them, it is their loss.

We need to learn from Nature. Just opposite our flat, pigeons live in one corner of a balcony. The owners recently installed a net to prevent them. Still, around 6 o'clock every morning, two pigeons come and try to break in—continuously—for 1 to 2 hours. I’m not sure of the reason, but uncertainty defines the lives of many species.

Look at the Falcon story. This was recently recorded and reported. A female falcon was equipped with a GPS tracker during her journey from South Africa to Finland. She covered approximately 230 km per day, flying in a straight line across African lands until she reached the desert in the north. She then followed the path of the Nile River over Sudan and Egypt, avoiding the Mediterranean Sea. Instead, she crossed Syria and Lebanon and also steered clear of the Black Sea—because if she got thirsty, she wouldn’t be able to drink from it. She continued flying in a straight line and reached Finland after 42 days. This is life for many species.

Let us pray to God for giving us this beautiful life without such stressful complications. Be happy with what we have received in this life. We are all short-lived. Don’t chase after artificial possessions that are temporary—be it beauty, money, position, or even family. At any moment, anything can be taken away.

One of our relatives met with a fatal accident and lost her beautiful face to burns. I’ve witnessed families who were once filthy rich lose everything in business and now struggle for daily bread. I saw CXOs attending calls till evening, and due to a trivial issue beyond their control, being asked to leave the same day. Years of 24x7 commitment were washed away like a flash flood, sweeping away their lavish cars and the foundations of their apartments.

Don’t forget to plan the unplanned!

– Ravi Saripalle

Jobs Then and Now: A Postcard from the Past, A Prompt for the Future

Dear Friends

I am not sure if you experienced this or not, every week we used to wait for Employment News, the flagship journal for job seekers, published by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India. It started in 1976, used to be referred to as Employment News in English and Hindi (Rozgar Samachar).

I come from a small town named Vizianagaram. It has a fort built by the Maharajas. Besides, there used to be a Pani Puri Chat shop. It was an interesting business model. This guy, named Nagabhushanam, used to paste all employment-related information on a wall. It was not just posters pasted, but he used to run like a mini staffing agency (printed applications, postal cover with target address pasted, photocopy facility, and other key ready-reckoners for a particular job application). All these unemployed aspirants used to apply through the corner and also have a pani puri!! A perfect blend of a business model.

While I am talking about the Pani Puri cart, it reminds me of an Insta post yesterday by Startup Pedia — “At just 22, Nandan turned a ‘weekend cart’ into a ₹3–4 lakh/month streetwear brand in Bangalore. Untamed Streetwear isn’t just clothes — it’s his vision, his vibe, and a growing cultural hub for streetwear lovers.” It is a cart-based fashion startup bringing bold, affordable streetwear to Indian streets.

Anyway, let me come to the topic of today’s story. I used to follow the India Post (those days it was the Indian Postal Service) Assistants. Now they are calling it Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS). It was purely based on 10th Class merit. The expected cutoff is 84 to 95% in the 10th class. I was eligible for this; I used to contemplate applying for this. When IT recruitments began, we used to closely monitor them in the national newspapers; of course, there were a few. They used to run mostly by referral, or you needed to follow them in Bangalore/Hyderabad. Of course, we needed to stand in a long queue to hand over our resume — only to the “Security Guard” during weekends. In rare instances, we used to mail to HRs. Employment News used to be limited to jobs like Computer Operator, Computer Operator (Steno), Computer Operator (Accounts), etc.

From that phase, we transitioned to AI-driven Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). They intelligently screen resumes, match candidates to jobs, reduce bias, and improve the overall candidate experience. In this chaos, yesterday I saw an interesting hiring post on LinkedIn. I am sharing an excerpt of it.

“Meet my all-star team. Time to level up with some fresh talent – because even AIs need humans to hit the ‘deploy’ button without existential dread.

Shoutout to the current squad: ChatGPT: Chief Content Officer,Perplexity: Chief Research Officer,Gamma: Deck Designer,Midjourney: Creative Director,Canva: Carousel Designer,

Veo: Video Editor,Veo 3: Video Maker,Genspark AI: Prompt Engineer,EasyGen: Copywriter.

Now, hiring for open roles: Chief Product Officer (CPO), Chief Software Architect, Coding Engineers: Code like a boss, debug like a therapist, Agentic Expert, Integration Experts. My biggest HR challenge? Keeping these agents from unionizing over server space… and now convincing humans we’re not replacing them.”

Are you ready for the transition?

Ravi Saripalle

From Chai to ChatGPT: The Evolution of Shared Knowledge

Dear Friends

During our childhood days, the most engaging places in the morning or evening times would be the Tea Stalls and Barber shops. People often visit them not just to sip the tea but to listen and participate in the most engaging conversations. They would range from politics to business. Similarly, barber shops used to be hook centres for entertaining discussions, street gossip, and many more!! In these Tea stalls, there would be 3-4 people to make the discussion active. The rest of the visitors keep an eye and lend an ear to them, while scanning through the newspaper. They will not have the ability to overpower those 3-4 debaters, but give them thumbs up with their nods. I hope many of you might have experienced this.

Did you see any such Tea shops and Barber shops now? Did you observe that these Tea shops have transformed into Coffee Clubs? You can observe a few customers silently sitting in one corner of these shops and browsing through their mobiles. Similarly, these Barber shops are transitioning to Salons, in some advanced locations, to unisex salons! What do you observe there? Again, customers are hooked to screens, scrolling through a few reels. Those engaging conversations have become old-fashioned!

In fact, in those days, especially in rural villages, these shops also acted as social cops! They used to enquire like a friendly interrogation — Where are you coming from? Whose house are you visiting? What are you doing? How much salary are you earning and so on? In fact, whenever we used to go to our grandfather’s village, we used to encounter these questions. Surprisingly, by the time we reach our grandfather’s village (we need to cross 2-3 villages on foot or by bullock cart), these cycle peddlers used to share with our grandfather that we were visiting! This is the kind of neural network that runs there. They used to be much more powerful than AI-based artificial neural networks (ANNs) or Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs).

Why am I bringing this conversation up? A recent study (Semrush, June 2025) analysed 150,000 citations across AI outputs from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and others — using 5,000+ diverse keywords. Can you guess who is supplying the most information to these LLMs like ChatGPT? You might think Google or Facebook, right? No, surprisingly, 40.1% of citations are coming from Reddit. Next, with Wikipedia 26.3%, YouTube 23.5%, Google 23.3%, StackOverflow 18.7%, etc. As per Steve Nouri, Reddit is now the #1 training source for AI. Reddit isn’t just a forum anymore — it’s the backbone of generative AI.

What does this mean for Builders, Brands, and Founders? Conversations > Content! Authority is being redefined (Not by domain age). A 20,000-word blog post has no significance, but Active Reddit threads, Engaging X posts, and YouTube explainer videos make all the difference. Trust is being crowdsourced. Community is your new homepage!!
 

Will there be any impact on the UX strategy of product and services companies? Yes, definitely! When we were studying RDBMS (Relational Database Management Systems), information was arranged in rows and columns! For many years, storing an image in the database was a luxury until object databases came. Today, your PDF document, your reel, or your picture on a webpage are all considered as database feeds for your LLMs.

Did you observe any other changes?

Ravi Saripalle

The Shifting Faces of Friendship and Enmity: Ancient Lessons for Modern World

Dear Friends

In recent times, the global discourse on geopolitics has shown us that international relations are fluid—what may seem like rivalry today could become collaboration tomorrow.

I know a family with 3 children. One of them was brilliant, one was Medicare, and another was hopeless. Parents did not have any hopes for the hopeless boy. Time grew, but there was no change in the attitude. At the end of life, the first two who were well settled were unable to extend help to their parents. They deserted them. However, the one who they were ignorant came to the rescue in the end. Now, do we determine who is right? The first impressions in childhood or the last impressions in late life? This is a complex situation, right?

Understanding one biological family with its own connecting genes becomes tough, what to speak of countries and their national priorities? Building a long-term policy is always tough. We may not be able to comment on such subtle issues. We see a few statements aired on the news channels and form an opinion on the leaders. However, if a 195-column matrix report (number of countries on the earth vs one country mapping) is before the leader, how can one make an easy decision? Any decision will have a huge impact. Their job is not that easy. Let us respect. They make decisions based on current National priorities.

In history, we saw the Chandragupta Maurya & Seleucus Nicator episode. Chandragupta defeated Seleucus’s forces, and later, Seleucus gave his daughter in marriage to Chandragupta. In modern history, we have umpteen examples of such conflicts between Nations, especially during world wars and post-war wars. A friend at a time became a foe later, and vice versa.

What is the right solution at any point? Follow Scriptures! They teach us what Dharma and Adharma are. The Mahabharata is one such great scripture that explains these complex relationships.

Karna and Pandavas - Own Brothers- different sides of the war

Arjuna and Drona- Best Teacher-Student Relationship- different sides of the war

Dronacharya and Drupad - In their youth, friends – Later bitter rivalry- different sides of the war

Bhisma- Great-grandfather for both the Pandavas and Kauravas. Blessed Yudhishthira, wishing for his victory-- different sides of the war.

Yuyutsu, the half-brother of the Kauravas, was raised among the Kauravas. Before the war began, Yuyutsu openly defected to the Pandava side, choosing to support righteousness over his family of origin.

Ashwatthama grew up with the Pandavas, who were his father’s students- different sides of the war

Śalya was Nakula and Sahadeva’s maternal uncle, by blood. Yet, through Duryodhana’s cunning hospitality trick, he was bound to support the Kauravas.

Śakuni & Kauravas-At one level, he was their “uncle” and advisor, seemingly protective of Duryodhana. But in truth, his hatred of Hastināpura made him orchestrate their downfall.

Dhṛtarāṣṭra & Pāṇḍavas: As their uncle and king, he often expressed affection. Yet his blind love for Duryodhana made him do injustices against them. However, during the old age (post-Kauravas period), Pandavas took care of him.

Karna & Bhīṣma: Bhishma was refusing to fight alongside him, but within the same army.

Vidura & Dhṛtarāṣṭra: Vidura was Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s half-brother. Yet, it makes him feel like an outsider in the same family.

Jayadratha & Pāṇḍavas: Jayadratha married Duryodhana’s sister. Earlier, in spite of attempting to abduct Draupadī, the Pāṇḍavas spared his life. Later, he became the cause of Abhimanyu’s death.

Kṛpācārya & Pāṇḍavas: As a guru, he instructed them with affection. But bound by his loyalty to Hastināpura-- different sides of the war

What is the right solution? Depend on the Lord and scriptural application, whosoever we believe, regardless of religion. In the Pandavas' case, they were dependent on Lord Krishna and the teachings of the Bhagavat Gita. We need to pray that Leaders get that intelligence, and after that, just believe in their actions, as we don’t know what is right and wrong!!

Ravi Saripalle

Four Types of Professionals: Where Do You Belong?

 Dear Friends,

Recently, the photo of Alejandro Navarro went viral. He was a devoted math teacher from Texas. He rushed to the hospital with a severe health crisis. He brought his laptop and charger along with him. From his ICU bed, he spent his last moments grading papers—making sure every student’s work was completed and no one was left behind. The next day, he passed away.

However, many such dedicated teachers go unnoticed. Having said that, a few teachers spoil the spirit with their ill attitude. Often, teachers are shown as comedians in many movies, and that impression is carried among some students. Generally, the true value of a teacher is unnoticed as the student encounters teachers during childhood/adolescence. During this age, they wouldn’t have major responsibilities. Often this phase is carried away with fun and ambiguity, and they do not recognize the value of the teacher. By the time the student realizes this fact, there are no teachers mapped. In the process, many times, the teacher also loses purpose and motivation due to this non-recognition by their students. On top of this, in current times, the teaching profession has become commercialized. Revenue generation and recognition have become core motivational factors.

Where are those great teachers like Sujit Chattopadhyay? He is fondly known as the Two Rupees Teacher. In 2021, he was awarded the Padma Shri. After retiring in 2004 at the age of 60, he was concerned about how he would spend his days in retirement. Three girls, who had travelled 20 kilometres barefoot, arrived at his house one day, requesting him to teach them. This humble beginning has now grown to enrol more than 350 children.

Being a teacher myself, sometimes I feel I am also trapped. I hail from a teacher’s family. My great-grandfather and maternal grandfather were Sanskrit teachers. My paternal grandfather, my parents, and my sister were teachers. Later, my spouse left an IT job and became a teacher. With this background, I also quit my IT job in 2010 and joined teaching with a specific purpose in mind. I was able to spend almost a year without salary. The fire in my belly was intact. However, when funds started drying, I could not sustain that fire and committed to a day job for salary—of course in teaching. Having said that, I did not lose the purpose, but it got diluted with different professional and family responsibilities and was often tagged with certain limitations. In those circumstances, you are no more labelled as a Mission Teacher.

That was the time I realized the difference between Drifter Teacher, Mechanic Teacher, Dreamer Teacher, and Mission Teacher. Let me give the definitions.

• X–Axis (horizontal): Inspiration/Dedication (Left = Low Dedication, Right = High Dedication).
• Y–Axis (vertical): Purpose (Bottom = Low, Top = High).

Then the 2x2 matrix would be:

• Bottom Left (Low Purpose, Low Dedication): Drifter Teacher (neither committed nor purposeful).
• Bottom Right (Low Purpose, High Dedication): Mechanic Teacher (hardworking but without deeper vision).
• Top Left (High Purpose, Low Dedication): Dreamer Teacher (inspired but inconsistent in practice).
• Top Right (High Purpose, High Dedication): Mission Teacher (ideal blend, teaching with meaning and effort, without expecting any results—name, fame, money).

When we aspire for growth in terms of recognition, salary, and promotion, we can never be called Mission Teachers. They should be by-products. A few reach this level. My maternal grandfather was a Mission Teacher. However, I rate the rest of my family members to the level of Mechanical Teachers. Given good health and minimum self-sustenance, I aspire to attempt once again and retest in the future. Of course, we are all bound to fulfil certain family responsibilities. Otherwise, the same world would categorize them as Mission Teachers but irresponsible towards family.

It is not just limited to teaching; the same matrix is applicable to every profession. Honestly, which category do you belong to? Self-reflect.

Ravi Saripalle

Hallucination is Not a Bug, It’s a Feature: Lessons for AI and Humanity

Dear Friends,

Recently, I was watching a documentary on Makoko AKA, Lagos, also known as the Venice of Nigeria—the largest floating slum in Africa. This is a floating village. Long back, we visited Kerala, stayed in a floating cottage and boathouse on the Kochi backwaters, and earlier at the Alleppey backwaters. The purpose there was to recreate in nature. However, the Makoko scene is completely different. I was astonished and amused to witness their life on the waters. It is surrounded by dirty sewage water. People commute using boats, and a few children were swimming in those waters. Constant fear (natural calamities, epidemics, and neighborhood issues) haunts people. In contrast, just opposite this slum, we can witness Lagos city—the largest urban agglomeration in Nigeria and one of the fastest-growing megacities in the world.

Now, what is today’s story? Let’s contemplate the learning & thinking process of kids who grow up in rich conditions versus slum conditions. If you ask them the same question: What are you most scared of?

• A rich kid may respond (of course, not all of them): “Monsters under the bed, using public transportation, or losing power & internet.”

• A slum kid may respond (again, not all): “Demolition of their temporary shelter by the government, floods, hunger, or fights in the neighborhood.”

If a rich kid sees the slum kid’s answer, it causes amusement, and vice versa. There is nothing wrong or right here.

However, there is a huge uproar when it comes to AI responding to a few questions differently. After all, an AI model is like a child. What you feed, how you train—it comes out. Having said that, it is causing huge financial damage to the AI model owners. A human learns year after year and makes decisions. If it goes wrong, we accept it and say “human error.” But we are not giving sufficient time to AI to learn. If it says something wrong, we immediately call it a hallucination. (Dictionary meaning: a sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch that a person believes to be real but is not real.)

A Vectara study found that even the best models still make things up at least 0.7% of the time. According to allaboutai.com, these “hallucinations” caused $67.4 billion in damages globally in 2024.

We all need to understand: Hallucination is NOT A BUG. It is A FEATURE. That is how AI understands and responds—like any average human being’s response. Let’s not misunderstand it. Future jobs will include AI Human Reviewers—teaching AI specific lessons on domains and issues, and reducing hallucination. Later, AI Tutors will comprehensively teach humans! This is going to be a new cycle.

Today, The Hindu published an editorial: “Set the guardrails for AI use in courtrooms.” This was in the context of a recent case where an AI transcription tool repeatedly transcribed the claimant’s name, “Noel”, as “no.” If AI cites a paper—Journal of Applied AI, Vol. 12, 2019—that does not exist, we need to help AI understand the issue. If you ask AI, “What’s the capital of Brazil?” and it confidently replies “Buenos Aires” instead of Brasília, we need to teach the AI. These hallucination scenarios are to be patiently resolved with AI.

In the 1990s, we hired many manual testers to catch software bugs. Over time, manual testers started vanishing, and the era of test automation began. Now the same manual tester is coming back in a new avatar called an AI Human Reviewer. Their job is to catch and correct hallucinations before they reach users.

Human judgment and AI hallucination will always exist. They change from time to time, context to context, data to data, and many more factors. When we accept human judgment in the form of human error or rational decision, the same should apply to hallucination as well. Let’s accept it.

The ultimate solution forever would be to develop AI systems with a Human in the Loop. Fully autonomous systems are not practical for humanity (especially in the Indian context). And a human race without technological aid would also push us back to a primitive state. Both radical scenarios are not good for society.

Wishing policy makers balance this act—especially in the Indian context—with 56 million rich (>30L), 432 million middle class (5L to 30L), 732 million aspirers (1.25L to 5L), and 196 million destitutes (<1.25L) (2021 data). A Bharat AI Policy should cater to these levels, and AI training data should represent these four classes.

Ravi Saripalle

The ₹-Cost of the Tilted Head— How Neck Pain Leads to GDP Pain?

Dear Friends,

I asked Siddharth to draw a concept for today’s article. In our casual conversation, he was talking about a particular artist who drew various people’s pictures across the world while they were doing their respective chores (walking, eating, chatting, shopping, etc.), watching a mobile in their hand. Later, he chopped their hands in his pictures and grouped them on one canvas, showing how their heads tilted down irrespective of their chore.

This tilting is not just a head pose/neck-down issue, but it is becoming an economic pose-down! Let me dive deep into the statistics. However, a few numbers are assumptions. I am drawing some derivations for discussion purposes, but a few may not be true figures.

Explodingtopics.com

published a few stats recently on this issue. Globally, in 2025, people spend approximately 6 hours and 40 minutes of screen time per day. Daily screen time has increased by over 30 minutes per day since 2013. Almost half (49%) of 0- to 2-year-olds interact with smartphones. Gen Z averages around 9 hours of screen time per day. Here is the rate of change between average screen time in 2023 and 2024 for select countries: India’s change in screen time increased by 22 minutes in one year itself.

I was doing simple math on how it is an economic issue. Here are my assumptions and numbers.

Total smartphone users — 71,20,00,000 (people) — Estimated India smartphone users (~2025).

Employed ratio: 53% — Assume the share of the population that is employed.

Reels watchers’ fraction: 25% — Assumed share of people watching 1 h/day.

Average hourly wage: 101.50 (₹/hour).

However, when they watch these reels, they get some entertainment as well. Assume 20% of that 1 hour is the value credited back. This is a productivity gain value.

However, most of them watch at night (assuming 30%), and they get fatigued the next day, which impacts productivity the next day. I took fatigue hours as 0.16 (hours/day). This is productivity loss.

It also strains the eye. Assuming 18% of them need an extra eye exam, and the eye exam costs 500 rupees. This is an economic cost.

However, platform owners like Insta/Facebook get some ad revenue. Assume Ad Revenue Per Hour: 0.29 (₹/hour) — gross monetization per hour of social attention. Having said that, assume the creator’s share of ad revenue is 25% (share).

However, assume 50% of non-employed watchers are students; for them, it is learning loss and future opportunity loss, hence it is future economic loss. It means assuming a displacement rate of study time of 1 hour/day.

In between, I took many more assumptions, a lot of math, and finally arrived at a number. Of course, I am not that great in math accuracy (assume a few mathematical errors and approximations); however, it is a whopping figure!! I am showing here how big the loss is!!

Employed net cost/productivity loss/opportunity cost (annual): ₹3.669 trillion ≈ ₹3,66,869 crore;

Students’ human-capital loss (annual-equivalent): ₹0.146 trillion ≈ ₹14,586 crore;

Total annual impact (Employed + Students): ₹3.815 trillion (≈ 3.815 lakh crore)!! This is an economic loss of 1 hour of waste utilization without any learning from the content.

Mind-boggling number!! ~96% of the loss is workplace productivity/health; ~4% comes from students’ future-earnings erosion (annualized).

What is it for companies? What is it for schools and parents?

Company: At this scale, even a 1% productivity improvement against the habit is worth ~₹36,800 crore/yr nationally.

Parents: Replace 15 minutes/day of your ward’s time.

Platforms/Regulators: Expand bedtime prompts and session-length frictions; boost rev-share for positive learning content.

Ravi Saripalle