A Paper, A Passport, and A Lesson in Over-Relying on AI

A quick update before I get into the story. My paper, “Exposing Weak Links in Multi-Agent Systems under Adversarial Prompting,” has been accepted at the SE Workshop at AAMAS 2026. Grateful for the recognition. You can find it here.

Now, onto the real story.

The VISA Saga Continues

If you have been following my journey, you know that visa applications and I have a complicated relationship. Last time, I slept on an Indian road for an entire night just to secure a Korean visa. This time was marginally better, but only marginally.

I needed to travel to Cyprus for a conference. Given the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, routing through that region was not an option. So I booked my flights through London. Seemed like a perfectly reasonable decision at the time.

What I did not anticipate, not in a thousand years, was that I would need a visa simply to transit through London. Let that sink in. A transit visa. To change planes.

Here is the irony: Cyprus is not yet part of the Schengen zone. It will be later this year. Had it joined a few months earlier, I would not have needed the London transit visa at all. Timing, as they say, is everything.

When “15 Days” Does Not Mean 15 Days

I applied for my Cyprus visa and attended my VFS appointment on April 2nd. The processing time? Fifteen days. Simple arithmetic: April 2nd plus fifteen days meant I should have my passport back by the 17th, perhaps the 19th at the latest.

What they neglected to mention was that those were fifteen working days, which translates to roughly three weeks.

This mattered enormously. My cousin’s wedding in Singapore was on May 1st, and my flight was booked for April 28th. This was not just any wedding. My entire extended family was converging in Singapore, and my mother and grandmother were travelling abroad for the first time. They were counting on me to navigate the airports with them.

By April 20th, my passport had not arrived. The situation was becoming critical.

Taking Control of the Situation

I did what any reasonable person would do. I called the Cyprus visa embassy in Delhi. Every single day. Monday through Friday. I explained the situation, requested an expedited process, and made my case with persistence and politeness.

By the end of the week, I am fairly certain they knew me by name. When I called on Friday, the response was something along the lines of, “Oh, the Singapore wedding situation, right?”

They released my passport on Friday, April 24th. Relief, but only partial.

I had already changed my flight to April 30th as a precaution. It meant missing the pre-wedding celebrations like the Haldi, but at least I would make it to the wedding itself.

Then came an unexpected turn. On Monday morning, alone at home in Kakinada, I woke up to a BlueDart notification: my package was out for delivery. I called my cousin immediately. Her response was instant: “Change your flight back. Now.”

I called the courier service, requested immediate delivery, and had my passport in hand by noon. I rebooked my flight, packed my bags, and caught a train to Vijayawada where my family was already at a hotel near the airport.

The train, of course, was delayed by four hours. I spent those hours sitting at the railway station, reminding myself that patience is not optional. It is a skill.

I made the flight. We all did. And Singapore? Absolutely worth every bit of the chaos. Here is a short vlog if you are curious.

The London Problem

While I was enjoying Singapore, a different problem was quietly building momentum.

I knew the London transit visa required fifteen working days of processing, and I would only return to India on May 8th, far too late for my May 23rd departure. But I had a plan: cancel the British Airways ticket, absorb a small cancellation fee, and rebook through Doha, which requires no transit visa.

Clean solution. Except for one detail.

When I called my booking agent on May 6th, I learned the tickets were non-refundable. Not partially refundable. Non-refundable. The airline would not return a single rupee. We are talking about lakhs of investment at stake.

I explored every alternative. Could British Airways route me through a different country? Could I obtain a visa for an alternative transit point? The answer was uniformly no. British Airways operates through its London hub. There is no way around it, quite literally.

The only viable path forward was a priority visa, five working days of processing, at an additional cost of seventy thousand rupees on top of the standard fees. Expensive, yes. But compared to losing the entire flight investment, it was the rational choice.

A Lesson in Over-Relying on AI

Here is where things got interesting, and instructive.

I turned to Gemini to help me navigate the priority visa booking process. It confidently told me that priority processing had to be selected before booking a VFS slot, and that new slots opened at 1 AM London time, or 4:30 AM in India.

I lost an entire night of sleep preparing to book at that hour.

Turns out, Gemini was wrong. A few Reddit threads pointed me in the right direction: you pay the standard fees first, and the priority option appears later in the VFS workflow. Simple as that.

This experience was a sharp reminder. We have grown remarkably comfortable deferring decisions to AI systems. I was ready to restructure my entire night based on a confident but incorrect recommendation. AI is a powerful tool, arguably the most powerful tool of our generation, but it is not infallible. The moment we stop verifying, we start making avoidable mistakes.

Where Things Stand

I attended VFS for biometrics and opted for their premium lounge, roughly five thousand rupees. Is it worth it out of pocket? Probably not. But when the company is covering expenses, it is a reasonable comfort.

The visa application is in process. If all goes well, I will be in London and then Cyprus within the week.

This will be my last international trip before I leave Microsoft Research to pursue something new. More on that soon.

Stay tuned.