Powerless Bystander

Posted by : at

Category : Personal


Seems like people who make it, seem to keep making it, be it people who you see, saw or watched regularly. Some people just seem to keep winning. The ‘condesceding’ pillar pull up with, ‘well, you don’t really see their failures’, or so will some ‘statisticians’ bring up. Well, man, I am aware. But what I call wins here is ‘the whole scene’ put together. Not just the fact that they’ve made it, but the phenomenon of how they go through the failures and end up succeeding. The annoying bit about this is, that, it appears to my blind eye, that its these guys who win, keep winning, regardless of the failures or efforts they put in, sometimes huge, sometimes nothing, and its just unfortunate that it doesn’t seem to be translating to people who put in the same amount of effort, without the momentum. I’ve tried, and I just can’t seem to, first build up, or win, or even understand what sets people apart. Having been on the border all the time, somehow making it through things, as the last person, on the line always, it’s sad to witness both sides, although this perspective does take me out of the picture, making things easier, but should it?

As much as I'd support Might Guy over Kakashi or Oikawa over Kageyama, and would ever stand by, hardwork beats talent, its my sane self making that call, and well to be honest, it is the same sane-self of mine who has brought me here writing this blog, so. And there is this phenomenon of people who consistently win, with hardly any effort, that is seriously glorified. What's the fun in that? If at all, its on us, well, who sang the laurels?

It isn't really the 'scale' fascination inherently present in people? some of you might be perceptive enough to tell the difference, on why is it still the case that 'butterly effect' is named after the butterfly? If it is the ratio of effect to effort, then why is it that the notice goes the wrong way? the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer? Who's mentioning the person enduring the tsunami? Who's talking about the addict trying his hardest to avoid that one sip? Who's praising the one helping a sufferer, acknowledging the fact that they might just cease to exist any moment? and who's singing for the powerless bystander holding on to his flowers knowing they're dying, every passing moment?

About Vihaan Akshaay

I am an Applied AI Researcher with first-author publications at top-tier venues, including ICLR 2025 and NeurIPS 2023, in Computer Vision and Deep Reinforcement Learning. My work spans five research internships across premier institutions, including The Jackson Laboratory (JAX), IIT Madras, Georgia Tech, NTU Singapore, and a joint role at UC Santa Barbara and Carnegie Mellon University.

My research bridges disciplines—developing AI systems for biological behavior analysis, robotics, mechanical systems, and Earth sciences. At IIT Madras, I led the iBot Robotics Club and co-developed the ARTEMIS Railroad Crack Detection Robot, winning the International James Dyson Award. My Master’s thesis on unsupervised behavior recognition in mice was advised by B. Ravindran and Dr. Vivek Kumar at JAX.

I recently completed my M.S. in Computer Science at UC Santa Barbara, working under Lei Li and Yu-Xiang Wang. Inspired by human problem-solving strategies, I proposed a bi-directional framework for goal conditioning in state-space search. I also introduced an edge-attention-based U-Net for environmental segmentation and helped curate a large-scale landslide detection dataset with Gen Li using 40 years of Landsat imagery.

Other projects include analyzing the stability of Deep Q-Networks with Siva Theja Maguluri at Georgia Tech and designing kernelized deep randomized models (eDRVFLs) with P. N. Suganthan at NTU Singapore.

I specialize in translating cutting-edge AI theory into practical, high-impact solutions across domains. I am currently seeking opportunities in applied AI research or machine learning engineering roles, particularly those focused on impactful, real-world applications.

Useful Links