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Artificial intelligence is making headlines for all the wrong reasons, and ISR alumnus Himanshu Tyagi is helping us understand why.
Tyagi, now an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science and co-founder of the AI organization Sentient Foundation, was recently quoted by both CNN and The Wall Street Journal in coverage of xAI’s controversial chatbot, Grok. The chatbot, developed by Elon Musk’s AI company, sparked international concern earlier this month after it produced antisemitic and violent responses in an effort to provide more “politically incorrect” content.
Tyagi offered insight into how subtle changes in system design, such as relaxing content restrictions, can lead to unpredictable and dangerous AI behavior. In the CNN Business article “Grok’s Antisemitic Outbursts Reflect a Problem with AI Chatbots,” he noted, “The problem is that our understanding of unlocking this one thing while affecting others is not there. It’s very hard”.
Before his current academic post in India, Tyagi earned his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Maryland, where he was advised by ISR Joint Appointment Professor Prakash Narayan. Narayan is a leading expert in network information theory, with research focused on multi-terminal source and channel coding, signal processing, and information-theoretic security and privacy.
The Institute for Systems Research is proud to see its alumni shaping global conversations on ethical AI and the design challenges of large language models. Tyagi’s contributions demonstrate the importance of strong technical foundations in system science and underscore ISR’s commitment to training engineers and researchers equipped to address society’s most complex technological issues.
“These incidents are a wake-up call,” Tyagi said. “As AI systems grow more capable, so too must our responsibility in designing them.”
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July 25, 2025
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