Yatharth Maheshwari

NEW DELHI PRODUCT & STRATEGY AI SAFETY

Loud speech consisting of a shower of words, the skill in expounding the Scriptures, and likewise erudition — these merely bring on a little personal enjoyment to the scholar, but are no good for Liberation.

vāgvaikharī śabdajharī śāstravyākhyānakauśalam |
vaiduṣyaṃ viduṣāṃ tadvadbhuktaye na tu muktaye ||

वाग्वैखरी शब्दझरी शास्त्रव्याख्यानकौशलम् ।
वैदुष्यं विदुषां तद्वद्भुक्तये न तु मुक्तये ॥

— Vivekacūḍāmaṇi, verse 58 · Ādi Śaṅkarācārya
about · 01

someone, exploring life with passion, enthusiasm and..embracing failures

I'm an undergrad at IIT Madras (BS Data Science & Applications, ML specialization) and Amity University (BSc with minors in game theory and international relations). Currently a Fellow at the CORDA Democracy Fellowship and the Futurekind Spring 2026 cohort by Electric Sheep.

Before this, I founded two AgTech ventures (one selected for the Wadhwani AI Ignite Cohort) and worked across growth & product at Ploxi Consult, AgroSplash, McCormick India, and CCS-NIAM. Now I work on AI control, governance, and biosecurity — usually through hackathons and sprints with Apart Research.

I care about making advanced systems go well, and I think a lot about how research, product, and policy talk past each other. Always happy to chat — reach out.

now · 02

What I'm doing this season.

  • →CORDA Democracy Fellow — case studies of AI safety startups across the democracy-relevant stack (Project 20)
  • →Futurekind Spring 2026 cohort — building at the intersection of AI safety, neglected impact, and field-building
  • →Following up on PBGP — submitted to TAIGR @ ICML 2026, applying for BlueDot Impact Rapid Grant
  • →Reading recent AI control, evals, and interpretability work
  • →Writing on LessWrong and Substack as I figure things out
experience · 03

A short timeline.

  • 2026 —CORDA Democracy FellowOpen Democracy AI · Project 20: Securing Democracy by Design.now
  • 2026Futurekind Spring 2026 FellowElectric Sheep · 12-week AI safety cohort.now
  • 2024 · 25Growth & Product ConsultingPloxi Consult, AgroSplash, McCormick India, CCS-NIAM.past
  • 2023 · 252x AgTech FounderValidated two ventures over 18+ months · Wadhwani AI Ignite cohort.past
education · 04

Where I'm learning.

  • 2023 —Indian Institute of Technology MadrasBachelor of Science in Data Science & Applications.now
  • 2021 · 25Amity University Uttar PradeshBachelor of Science.past
people · 05

People who shape how I think.

Person One
researcher
Person Two
writer
Person Three
founder
Person Four
teacher
Person Five
friend
Person Six
collaborator
quotes · 06

Lines I keep returning to.

You are going to have a great time. The future will be both more boring and more strange than you expect.— placeholder, 2024
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.— placeholder, 1974
Make of yourself a light.— placeholder, 5th c. BCE
recommendations · 07

Things worth your attention.

A book worth reading
by an author you should know
book
A paper that reframed something for me
researcher et al.
paper
An essay I keep sending to people
essayist · blog
essay
A small tool that makes my week better
someone's side project
tool
thoughts · 08

Half-formed notes & questions.

  • 2026What can arms-control inspections actually teach AI governance?working notes from the AMC sprint.draft
  • 2026Unsupervised AI control: how far can divergence-based detectors go?follow-ups to PBGP.seed
  • 2026Verification mechanisms as a portfolio, not a single betnotes spinning out of VMFS.note
  • 2026When does a hackathon habit become research?essay seed on going from sprints to a program.draft
hobbies & interests · 09

Things I do for no good reason.

  • →Long walks. Currently mapping every park within 5km on foot.
  • →Cooking. South Indian breakfast, slowly getting better at dosas.
  • →Chess. Stuck around 1400 ELO; happy to play.
  • →Bookbinding. Hand-stitching small notebooks; results vary.
  • →Photography. Mostly street, mostly grain.
  • →Writing letters. Real ones. Stamps and everything.
projects · 06

Things I'm building or have built.

  • 2026PBGP — Perturbation-Based Generation Profiling Apart AI Control Hackathon · 0.94–1.00 AUROC across six 8B–32B models · submitted to TAIGR @ ICML 2026. research
  • 2026How Should We "Inspect" AI? AMC × Uppsala Research Sprint · selected for AMC newsletter and Annual Conference, June 2026. report
  • 2026VMFS — Verification Mechanism Feasibility Scorer Apart Technical AI Governance Sprint · interactive rubric scoring nine AI verification mechanisms for halt-capable AI treaty design. tool
  • 2026HGT Leaves a Linear Fingerprint in Codon Space Apart AIxBio Hackathon · alignment-free virulence-factor classification under gene-family-disjoint evaluation. research
  • 2026BioChain — Cross-Vendor DNA Fragment Threat Detection Apart AIxBio Hackathon · cryptographic Order Commitment Records + Set Transformer over ESM-3 embeddings (AUC 0.907 ± 0.032). research
philosophizing every step that I walk, I think but I don't talk