The Why Man (Anand Vallamsetla)

AI Fund | Applied AI Engineering Leader | Evaluation-First LLM & Agent Platforms | Reliability & Guardrail Design | ex-Google | UC Berkeley

[The Why Man (Anand Vallamsetla) @thewhyman]

TEP: Technology, Education and Policy Substack - by @thewhyman https://t.co/rEMX3Cxshb

[The Why Man (Anand Vallamsetla) @thewhyman]

Integrity and empathy are everything!

[Roy T. Bennett @InspiringThinkn]

“No matter how educated, talented, rich or cool you believe you are, how you treat people ultimately tells all. Integrity is everything.” Anonymous

[Roy T. Bennett @InspiringThinkn]

“No matter how educated, talented, rich or cool you believe you are, how you treat people ultimately tells all. Integrity is everything.” Anonymous

[The Why Man (Anand Vallamsetla) @thewhyman]

https://t.co/Ub3zm0eUwN

[Claude @claudeai]

Introducing Claude Fable 5: a Mythos-class model that we’ve made safe for general use.

Its capabilities exceed those of any model we’ve ever made generally available.

[The Why Man (Anand Vallamsetla) @thewhyman]

Cowgorithm - Tech implemented in a good (safe/humane, real need) way to solve real problems!

Steady execution of boring beats shiny anytime!

This is a perfect boring problem I would have loved to solve :-)

Thanks for the great example. #AgTech #AI"

[Ole Lehmann @itsolelehmann]

this is just the most ridiculous AI application i've ever seen lol

a Peter Thiel-backed startup that makes AI collars for cows is now worth $2 billion

and the more I read about it the cooler it gets. here's how it works:

every cow wears a solar-powered collar that talks to a network of radio towers and an app on the farmer's phone

instead of building physical fences, the farmer draws the fence on a map in the app, and the collar keeps each cow inside that invisible line using GPS

when a cow drifts toward the edge, the collar plays a sound to steer her, and a gentle vibration tells her which way to go.

it's like how a car beeps as you back up toward a wall

the cows learn the cues in a few days

so now a rancher can move an entire herd to fresh grass by sliding the fence on a map, without driving out to open a single gate

and that same collar is reading each cow's body the whole time.

it takes five readings per second on every animal, so the AI can catch a cow that's sick, injured, ready to breed, or about to give birth before a person would ever notice walking the field

so it's basically like WHOOP for cows too lol

and they gave the AI behind it the perfect name: the Cowgorithm

it's been trained on more than 7 billion hours of real cow behavior, which is why Halter calls the data its real asset and moat.

they know what a normal cow looks like better than anyone, so they can flag the odd one out instantly

it's already on more than 1M cattle across New Zealand, Australia, and a bunch of US states.

California even used it on public land to graze cattle in patterns that clear dry brush and slow down wildfires

costs about $5 to $8 per cow per month

a job that used to mean barbed wire, gates, and driving the fields all day is now mostly 1 person on their phone

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔Anthropic published a blog post this week proposing a global slowdown of AI development. The company says AI could soon develop recursive self-improvement capabilities and that this "could come sooner than most institutions are prepared for."
The findings come from Anthropic Institute, an internal research division headed by co-founder Jack Clark. Anthropic filed its S-1 with the SEC last week, raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation, and signed a $1.25 billion a month compute deal with SpaceX days before this announcement.

My Take
A company that just filed to go public and committed to $1.25 billion a month in compute is now asking everyone else to slow down. I want to take the safety questions seriously because they're legitimate. But if the technology is dangerous enough to warrant a global pause, why file an S-1 the week before? Why sign a three-year compute deal?

"Our product is so powerful it might be dangerous" is the best line a pre-IPO company could write. It justifies the valuation and positions the company as the responsible one in a field full of competitors who won't stop. That might be sincere. It might also be very convenient. Right now I can't tell the difference, and I don't think Anthropic minds that I can't.

Hedgie🤗

[The Why Man (Anand Vallamsetla) @thewhyman]

https://t.co/Ua73e0kqhl

[The Why Man (Anand Vallamsetla) @thewhyman]

Full story (with photos) on LinkedIn: https://t.co/mMYQZ9Zsri

Repo (rough edges and all): https://t.co/vDJ44Z0jRV

[The Why Man (Anand Vallamsetla) @thewhyman]

I built a working AI security system this weekend. Solo. In about 30 minutes.

The impressive part isn't that I could. It's what being able to means for everyone building with AI.

[The Why Man (Anand Vallamsetla) @thewhyman]

The best lesson wasn't technical.

Time with Benoit Schillings reminded me: get in the room with people ahead of you, and the best of them are generous with what they know.

That, paid forward, is its own moat.

Full story and repo in the reply below.

[The Why Man (Anand Vallamsetla) @thewhyman]

I write about the cyborg way — human + AI architectures that keep agency on the human side.

Part 2 (the agent loyalty problem) drops next.

Follow if that's your topic.

#CyborgWay #AIMarketing #AgenticAI

[The Why Man (Anand Vallamsetla) @thewhyman]

The customer is no longer always human.

When AI agents mediate purchases, what are you marketing to?

The traditional buyer just split into three actors with different incentives.

Notes from a CMO + AI practitioner roundtable below.

[The Why Man (Anand Vallamsetla) @thewhyman]

3. The human layer becomes premium. Taste, curation, in-real-life experience — scarce as execution automates.

What we build, we become.

Decided in product roadmaps right now. Not in regulatory hearings.

The customer is no longer always human. But the author of intent still is.