Hardik's Notes
What we are learning.
Creativity, classrooms and AI, from a founder who is a PhD candidate in exactly this. Occasional letters, no hype.
Think Inside the Box - Try, Fail, Fix, Learn - Educators before equipment - Fit before ambition - Hardware is the reward - Creativity as a skill - Kept while it happens
30 posts, newest first
All posts
5 November 2026Can an AI notice a thought planted in its head?
Researchers placed a hidden idea inside a chatbot and asked if it noticed. Sometimes it did. Here is what that does and does not show.Read it
3 November 2026How an AI found a new antibiotic, and won a prize
Two MIT scientists won a 2026 prize for using AI to find antibiotics. Here is how the AI did it, in plain words, and what it has not done yet.Read it
1 November 2026An AI small enough to fit in a PC's boot sector
A maker has made a tiny neural network that runs before any operating system loads. Here is how small an AI can really be.Read it
31 October 2026Four small AI machines, all built on one board
Arduino named the winners of a contest for its UNO Q board. Four of them use AI to sense water, eggs, rides and light.Read it
30 October 2026A tiny chip that dreams up its own video games
A maker runs two small neural networks on a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W. One invents each game frame. The other plays it.Read it
28 October 2026Why chatbots stop learning, and a sleep-based fix
A chatbot is frozen after training. Google researchers test letting it 'sleep' to store new facts without losing old ones.Read it
24 October 2026Why chatbots make things up: AI was built to surprise
Early AI builders added randomness on purpose, to copy human creativity. A historian says that is where made-up answers come from.Read it
21 October 2026Build it this weekend: a reaction timer
One button, one LED and 30 lines of MicroPython on a Raspberry Pi Pico. It measures how fast you press, in milliseconds.Read it
21 October 2026Five million times faster? Read the small print
Arduino compared a 2000s chip with its newest AI board. The headline number is huge. The way they got it shows how to read any speed claim.Read it
20 October 2026Teach an AI symmetry instead of making it guess
A hospital scan AI has left-right symmetry built in, so it tells which way a head faces more reliably. What that shows about teaching AI.Read it
18 October 2026A 90% score does not make an AI an expert
AI tests, called benchmarks, are shaky. Researcher Moritz Hardt says the order of the models still means something, and the score alone does not.Read it
15 October 2026An AI that fixes weather forecasts weeks ahead
A small AI add-on learns the mistakes of big weather models and corrects them. It won a global contest for forecasts two to six weeks out.Read it
13 October 2026Ten minutes of AI answers can make you give up sooner
A study of 1,222 adults found that a short session with an AI that gives answers left people solving less and skipping more once it was gone.Read it
10 October 2026Does AI help you learn, or just finish the job?
A three-month trial gave lawyers an AI drafting helper. Their work got better. Their own skill grew only for the experienced ones.Read it
8 October 2026Every AI chip on one chart: from 2 watts to a data centre
MIT Lincoln Laboratory plots AI chips by speed and power. The chart shows why a camera and a data centre need different chips.Read it
8 October 2026How Google steers an AI image maker without rebuilding it
Ask for a lizard in sunglasses and you may get a lizard with none. Google Research built a small add-on that steers the model.Read it
5 October 2026Open now: 5 contests for students (October 2026)
Five contests students in India can enter now, from a one-weekend NASA hackathon to a 10,000 dollar environment prize. Deadlines from 29 October.Read it- 22 September 2026
How to find the one thing that is broken
Your circuit will not light. Your code will not run. Here is the method engineers use, and it works on homework too.Read it 
22 September 2026The Arduino UNO Q, explained in five levels
The board you already know has a Linux computer in it now. Explained five times: to a child, a teen, a college student, a grad student, an expert.Read it- 4 September 2026
Think Inside the Box
The least useful advice you can give a teacher with thirty children, one room and forty minutes. The argument for working inside the limits instead.Read it 
5 June 2026Git & GitHub for Beginners: From Zero to First Commit
A hands-on Git and GitHub tutorial for complete beginners. Install it, make your first commit, push to GitHub, and learn branches, in one sitting.Read it- 5 June 2026
What Is Git? 7 Ways It Quietly Saves Your Work
Git is the quiet safety net under almost all modern software. Here is what it actually is, in plain English, and seven everyday ways it saves your work.Read it - 4 June 2026
5 Questions That Turn Any Lesson Into a Thinking Lesson
The difference between a lesson students forget and one that makes them think is often just the questions you ask. Here are five that work in any subject.Read it 
4 June 2026A Portfolio Beats a Certificate. Build One in 30 Days.
A certificate proves you showed up. A portfolio proves you can do the work. Here is a 30-day plan to build one, even if you're starting from zero.Read it
4 June 2026Attention Is All You Need: The Paper Behind Modern AI
In 2017, eight researchers published a short paper that quietly rebuilt AI. Here is what "Attention Is All You Need" actually says, in plain English.Read it
4 June 2026Can creativity be taught? What decades of research found
Most people think creativity is something you're born with. The evidence disagrees. The four kinds of creativity, and how each one is built.Read it
4 June 2026Project-based learning fails for one reason. Here’s the fix.
Most project-based learning quietly fails, and it's not the projects. It's the missing scaffolding. Here is the one fix that makes PBL actually work.Read it- 4 June 2026
Open source AI vs GPT and Claude: where the gap remains
Open models now run within a few points of GPT and Claude, at a fraction of the cost. Six charts show how far the gap closed, and where it hasn't.Read it 
4 June 2026The Skills That Survive AI: What the Evidence Shows
Most "future skills" lists are guesswork. Here is what the actual labour-market data and cognitive research show about the skills worth building in 2026.Read it
1 June 20263 reasons why your school’s innovation lab quietly failed
Most school innovation labs go quiet within a year. The real reason is the kit, what the CBSE 2027 mandate wants, and how to build a lab that lasts.Read it
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