Santhosh Narayanan

I live in Chennai and work as an engineer. I love simplicity and clarity over noise, and I keep going with the flow.

About me

I am a calm observer. I value slow growth and craft. I look for the deeper meaning in a problem and I would rather reach the truth than a quick answer. Complexity creates confusion and distraction. Simplicity gives clarity.

Outside work I love to travel and explore.

I am a humble and ordinary person. Being simple is what makes me special.

What I like

Science, maths, philosophy, psychology and spirituality.

For entertainment, short animations, anime and animated films — the ones that carry a beautiful meaning and some hope. A few favorites: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Snow Bear, Black Clover, Dragon Ball Z, and many more.

Why I wrote Clover

The framework opens with the common clover. Three leaves, the one growing in every field, and how nearly everyone works with AI today. I am a common engineer in that sense. Clover came out of doing ordinary work and paying attention to it long enough to notice which leaf was missing.

None of it is a new way of working. What I kept seeing was accountability going missing once AI carried the work. A model can do the job, report that it worked, and hold nothing when it did not. Clover puts accountability for that work back with the named human who directs it, and gives AI a place inside the cycle as one of its actors.

That does not make one person accountable for a model released around the world. The company building and releasing the model remains accountable for the model and its consequences. If it does not uphold that responsibility, governments should enforce it.

A way of working that only one person understands does not change how a team works. That is why it is written down and open, and why every claim on it says what was checked, what was observed and where it stopped, including the parts that are unfinished.

How I see the world right now

We live in a very good time. Almost anyone, almost anywhere, can do the things they want to do and are passionate about. That is new, and it is worth saying out loud.

I love Japanese culture. It is exceptional, and I have always admired the focus and the discipline in it. Not everything about it is perfect. I do not like how much they overwork.

I admire China. The growth story is outstanding, built on collective hard work and on the welfare of their people. I am not sure of their intentions towards other countries.

The United States runs on dreams. The desire to reach the dream is what makes things happen around the world, and it is an open culture, which I admire. The idea of dominance troubles me, and how far they are going to push for it.

The nuclear bomb was a catastrophic mistake of humanity. That is why those three matter. Wars are not only physical now — they are fought through dominance, and the two main players are China and the United States. China leads in manufacturing, robotics and hardware. The United States leads in AI.

AI should not be the next catastrophic mistake of humanity. The scale is much bigger than the bomb, and the damage would reach much further.

Can we control the outcome? No. But each of us can make a meaningful contribution, so that the outcome turns out well.

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन ।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ॥

You have a right to your actions, but never to the fruits of your actions. Do not let the results of your actions be your motive, nor let attachment to the results lead you to inaction.