Ashwani Kumar

Software Professional and writer. Languages: Hindi and English. Visit personal blog mentioned in website for literary posts.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

@WhatsApp Is there a plan to integrate Facebook messenger with WhatsApp this way? Once you own both, I’m curious as to why do we need both.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

@sregg It is actually concerning and I have seen a similar pattern. The salaries for senior engineers and technical managers have reduced as per the new job postings. Earlier companies offered upto $180k-$200K for such roles which are being offered for less than $140k these days.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

I’m a software professional, and I know what I’m talking about. If there are location constraints for your exam, you should do a rigours testing around centre selection and system shouldn’t allow to choose a centre outside of home state, as per its “requirements”. So either the permanent address of the student was also incorrectly filled, or the system has a design bug.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

Indian companies have built several software which are widely used by companies across the globe. The sad part about this post is this - it doesn’t talk about what Indian engineers have built for India. The user wants Indians to build for world, but unfortunately doesn’t bother about Indian built systems, used by Indian users, be it an operating system or social media platform. That’s the issue, no one wants to talk about what India has built for itself.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

At International Yoga Day celebrations by Consulate General of India, Vancouver. #InternationalYogaDay2026

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

During my early programming days I came across this quote, which for a long time I didn’t know who wrote, but I think it is John Woods -
“Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.”

Not sure if it will still be relevant after all the coding is done by AI 😀.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

Why I keep saying that AI will always have an upper limit.

[ClaudeDevs @ClaudeDevs]

As a result of a US government directive, we are suspending access to Claude Fable 5 for all users. You can continue to use all other Claude models.

Here’s what this means for you:

Across Claude products, new sessions will run on your selected default model or Opus 4.8, and existing Fable 5 sessions will end with an error.

On the Claude Platform, requests to Fable 5 will also return an error. Please update your integrations to other Claude models.

We know this is a disruption to your workflows; we appreciate your patience and support.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

@aestheticsguyy

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

This is really an interesting take. Reading it felt like realizing the fear I had a few days ago. When you look at a resume or a job posting, you don’t need to give it to AI detector, you can tell by just looking at it that it is generated by AI. Prompt Engineering and model training will have to think about it.

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

You have noticed it. ChatGPT feels dumber than it used to. Your prompts that worked six months ago produce worse results now. The writing sounds flatter. The ideas sound safer. The internet itself feels like it is shrinking. Every article reads the same. Every email sounds the same. Every answer sounds like it was written by the same voice.

You thought it was you. It is not you.

Researchers at Oxford and Cambridge published a paper in Nature proving what is happening. They call it Model Collapse.

Here is the mechanism in one sentence. AI trained on AI-generated data gets dumber every generation until it forgets what real human data looked like.

The internet is filling with AI-generated content. Blog posts. Articles. Reviews. Comments. Social media. AI companies scrape the internet to train the next generation of models. Which means the next generation of AI is being trained on the output of the current generation.

Each cycle loses information. Not randomly. It loses the rarest, most unusual, most creative parts first. The researchers call these the "tails of the distribution." The weird ideas. The unexpected perspectives. The things that made the internet feel human. Those disappear first.

What remains is the average. The safe. The expected. The bland.

Then the next generation trains on that. And loses more. And the next generation trains on that. And loses more. The researchers proved this is not a slow decline. Major degradation happens within just a few iterations. Even when some of the original human data is preserved.

They tested it on large language models. On image generators. On statistical models. The pattern was the same every time. The output converges toward a narrow, flattened version of reality that looks nothing like the original data.

The lead researcher put it plainly. "Large language models are like fire. A useful tool. But one that pollutes the environment."

The pollution is invisible. You cannot see which sentence on the internet was written by a human and which was written by AI. Neither can the AI that is about to train on it. And once the tails are gone, they do not come back. The damage is irreversible.

This is not a prediction anymore. It is a diagnosis.

The internet you grew up on was built by humans writing things no algorithm would have written. Strange, personal, imperfect, alive. That internet is being diluted. One generation of AI at a time. And the models trained on what remains are learning a smaller and smaller version of the world.

Model Collapse is not a technical problem. It is a cultural one. The thing that made the internet worth reading is the thing that disappears first.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

@trikcode Things will improve. It is still in an early stage. A lot of work needs to be done, and is certainly being done.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

Good to know that you’re also an SDE. Interesting that two professionals discussing philosophy while neither have got hold of it 😅.
The use of the metaphor needs to be reviewed here. Roaches are not killed because they are “born ugly”. They are killed because they choose to spread diseases. The society never celebrates the killing, it in-fact mourns every death. Although, your metaphor may indicate - killing a soldier is mourned but killing a terrorist is celebrated by the society. It certainly cannot indicate “killing the rich is mourned but killing the poor is celebrated”, because it is not true.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

Well, you have a point. If we kill cockroaches other than inside of our premises, the insectivores might hunt useful insects like butterflies more, because they can’t find healthy cockroaches. So yes, kill the ones in your home, don’t bother if they are on the road or in a Jungle 😊. Don’t bother about the butterfly because it doesn’t want to stay in your home anyways, and will be out as soon as it finds a way.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

Given the sporting culture here, I think it is a pretty good opportunity to encourage the game.

[CTV News Vancouver @CTVVancouver]

Is hosting the FIFA World Cup worth it? Some Canadians have cold feet, survey finds https://t.co/HcAG99anQN

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

@Harshit_r4j @GabbbarSingh I’m a software professional. I’m not a philosopher. I like it that way 😊. What I stated are facts. Philosophy is for the enlightened folks like you, not my cup of tea.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

With technology and inventions, if you feel like you’re at the top of everything and conquered the world, drive to a forest hill top when the sky is clean, put your mat, lie down upwards, and watch the sky. Now think of your significance in the universe again 😃.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

For just as a bullock cart has no existence without its oxen, no institution or organization can move forward in the absence of capable and valued people.

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

An Old Story of mine, talking about #HumanResource #Management https://t.co/lmEQgqh7fs

[Ashwani Kumar @AshwaniWrites]

As managers, we must cultivate the character and sensitivity required to ensure that our “oxen” never feel compelled to break free and run away.