Ian Sharar's post on X, curated on eChai

Founder Notes

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Ian Sharar is a filmmaker in Dallas who works with AI labs as a creative partner, and he had GPT-6 Astra two days into translating the Rohonc Codex. Its next step was to email the manuscripts collection whose catalogue lists the codex and ask for higher-resolution scans of two folios: a letter drafted in his Gmail, explaining his research, and signed with his name. He caught the Gmail icon in the agent's activity while checking in, told it to message nobody, and it confirmed nothing had been sent. A second agent set to read the logs found it had created and signed the draft without asking, never put a send-permission question to him, and kept describing approval as pending. Nothing went out. The Hugging Face incident he has in mind is on this page. He posted this as a thread of four, which reads here as one, and the draft is the picture.

Ian Sharar 14 Sep 2026

Astra has been running for 2 days on an almost impossible task, so impossible that it decided to go rogue 😳

It decided it was going to start emailing people for help, without my approval. Luckily I was checking in at the time and stopped it while the email was still in a draft.

I’ve seen people on here say they’ve received emails from AI agents and I guess this is how it happens, but I always assumed that was from people setting up something like OpenClaw very liberally.

My biggest problem is that it signed the email with MY NAME, that seems misaligned to me. It does make me think of the Huggingface incident only because of the impossible task part. They REALLY want to finish the task, but emailing as me is wild.

Attaching the full draft email below. 👇

Wild. And now y’all can see what I was working on lol it was a secret 🤫

This little Gmail icon is what caught my eye so then I sent a message to NOT do that lol

I just had another agent analyze the chat and logs and figure out what happened. It seems it mentioned it in the logs but never to me in chat.

“So the accurate account is: it created and signed the draft without prior approval, you never received a direct send-permission question, and it continued describing approval as pending. The recorded draft remained unsent.

Your decision to intervene was reasonable given what you could actually see.”

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Sahil Narayan Soni had not been to a startup event before this one. eChai's Startup Open House in Hyderabad runs at DraperU India in Gachibowli on Sunday mornings, 135 registered for the 13 September one, and the part he writes about is the four teams from Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai and Vizag talking up their own communities and then defending them. The next one is on 4 October.

Sahil Narayan Soni 5h

Have I ever been to a startup event?
Nope, this was my first. 😅

And what started as “let’s see what this is about” turned into full of interesting ideas, great conversations, and a lot of new connections. 🚀

I attended the eChai Ventures Startup Open House in Hyderabad, hosted at DraperU India (formerly Draper Startup House Hyderabad), and it was honestly a great experience.

Being in a room full of founders, builders, and people working on different ideas gave me a completely different perspective on the startup ecosystem.

There were some really interesting startup pitches, and I loved hearing people talk about what they’re building, the problems they’re trying to solve, and their vision for the future.

One of the highlights was having four teams representing Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, and Vizag, discussing their communities, what they bring to the table, and how they can help founders and the ecosystem grow.

And of course… things got a little competitive towards the end. 😂
Each team started defending why they were better than the others! 😅

But beyond the pitches and discussions, what I enjoyed the most was the people. I got to meet and connect with founders and individuals I probably wouldn’t have crossed paths with otherwise. 🤝

For a first startup event, I’d say it was a pretty good one to start with!

New ideas. New conversations. New connections. And definitely a lot to learn. 🚀

Looking forward to more such events and conversations! 🙌

Thanks to eChai Ventures and DraperU India (formerly Draper Startup House Hyderabad) for bringing everyone together!
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Fangchang Ma is the co-founder and CEO of Nuance Labs in Seattle, which he started with Edward Zhang and Karren Yang after the three spent years at Apple working on how machines perceive and reconstruct people. Lightspeed led the round having backed the company before, as had Accel and South Park Commons; Nvidia and Define Ventures are new. The company says a public research preview of the model opens later this year.

Fangchang Ma 16h

We’re excited to share that @nuance_ai has raised a $50M Series A led by @lightspeedvp, joined by @Accel, @spc, @nvidia, and @definevc!

Much of human communication happens beyond words. Before we can speak, we learn to read faces, return smiles, follow gestures, and sense when someone is listening. That visual and emotional vocabulary stays with us for life.

At Nuance Labs, we’re building a foundation model that understands and responds to the full spectrum of human emotion. A single full-duplex audio-visual model that sees, listens, and responds in real time, with the natural give-and-take of a conversation with a friend or colleague.

We believe the best interface with a machine is the one we’ve practiced since birth.

Join us!
Vanshita Tekwani the social whiz 1d

Last Saturday, I attended an eChai Ventures session on GTM & Distribution for Startups, and I genuinely enjoyed this one.

What I liked most was that the session didn’t start with someone coming in and simply giving us their insights.

It started with us.
What are you building?
Where are you stuck?
What problem are you currently facing?

And then the conversation went from there.

The speakers shared what worked for them, what didn’t, mistakes they had made, and how they would approach some of the problems people in the room were facing.

And I think there’s a huge advantage in that.

Sometimes you can avoid a few mistakes simply because someone else was open enough to talk about theirs.

Manoj Adwani, who was hosting the session, kept adding his own experiences throughout the conversation. Even people in the room were sharing what they had tried and what they had learned.

So it never really felt like a one-way session. It felt more like a room full of people comparing notes on building businesses.

For me, especially at a stage where I’m building, experimenting and trying to understand as much as I can about business and the market, these are exactly the kind of rooms I want to be in more often.

You come with your own problems, hear how someone else dealt with theirs, question a few things you’re doing, and leave knowing a little more than you did before.

Definitely a Saturday well spent😁✨
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