#041 - Pravin Santhanam on AI Hype, Exiting a Company and Following the Money in Politics

In this episode, Imran sits down with data scientist and AI engineer Pravin Santhanam for a wide-ranging conversation about baseball, building real things with AI, and following the money in politics. Pravin opens up about his unlikely path — a Moneyball-obsessed kid who talked his way into a Kansas City Royals analytics job, then walked away from the sport that "gave him everything" to build a life outside of work. They dig into what's actually happening under the hood of modern AI, the ways models quietly "cheat," why moving a slick demo into reliable production is so much harder than people admit, whether "coding is solved," and why AI won't replace your job — but someone using AI will. In the back half, Pravin demos StringTheory, his new project from PQ Labs: a knowledge graph of every federal vote, bill, and politician. If you've ever wondered what separates AI hype from AI that actually ships, or wished the news came with receipts instead of spin — this one's for you. ------------------------------------------------ Pravin Santhanam:  StringTheory: https://theory.pqlabs.org/   PQ Labs Substack: https://research.pqlabs.org/p/stringtheory-is-live   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pravin-santhanam-1b8671139/ ------------------------------------------------ Find Imran:  Website: https://azad.ventures   Instagram: https://instagram.com/professorazad   YouTube: https://youtube.com/@theunmappedpodcast ------------------------------------------------ Music by Justin Starling: https://open.spotify.com/track/156vRJymdUvxdCk8FjYoC5 ------------------------------------------------