Where it started
I did not fall in love with technology first. I fell in love with the notebook. A cheap ruled notebook from a small shop near my school, where I used to write down anything that felt too big to hold in my head — a headline I overheard on the radio, a phrase from a teacher, a question I could not answer. Journalism, for me, began there: as a habit of writing things down before they slipped away.
Years later, when I first watched a language model write a paragraph in front of me, that same notebook feeling came back. Something new was happening in the world, and someone had to sit with it long enough to explain it properly.
Why AI, and why now
I did not come to AI from a computer science background. I came from reporting — talking to founders, researchers, students, small business owners, artists, and the many people quietly using these tools in their work every day. That angle matters. Most AI writing online is either overheated (“this changes everything”) or dismissive (“it’s just autocomplete”). Very little of it sits in the middle, where most real lives actually happen.
My beat is that middle. Careful, first-person, evidence-first writing about what AI is genuinely doing in India and beyond — and what it is not.
How I work
Every essay on this site follows the same discipline: read the primary source, run the tool myself, talk to at least one practitioner who is not selling anything, and only then write. If I don’t have a first-hand handle on a story, I don’t publish on it. I would rather be late and right than early and loud.
I write in English, but I think in Hindi and Hinglish. That shows up in the work. My goal is that a college student in Jaipur and a policy person in Delhi can both read the same piece and walk away with something usable.
What I am building here
This site is three things at once: a home for my essays, a small community for people who want to actually learn AI (not just talk about it), and a slow, deliberate consulting practice for teams that want an honest outside voice.
No hype cycle, no thread bait, no “10x your life” promises. Just steady work, published in public, with my name on it.
If you’re still reading
Then we probably want similar things from the internet — fewer takes, more thinking; fewer gurus, more notes from the field. The newsletter is the best place to follow along, and the community is where the real conversations happen. Either door is open.
— M.L.Dhaka, Delhi