In this week’s newsletter, I write about the need to hold ourselves to high standards in the age of AI. I also recap what I wrote about the increasing market share of Gemini and Claude, learning motion graphics with Cavalry, teaching the fundamentals and advanced techniques of Canva, and I shared good stuff on mindfulness.
This morning, I chanced upon a plant bearing yellow hibiscus flowers. I took a few close-ups of one flower, then I carried on my way. After about 200 metres, I halted and said to myself “That flower should be the banner for today’s newsletter, but I don’t have a horizontal shot. I need to go back.”
I walked back to the hibiscus plant and spent several minutes angling my phone until I had several horizontal photos that I was satisfied with. I also tried out the different Leica colour filters on the Xiaomi 17 Ultra phone to see which would suit the scene best. You can see the sequence of photos I took here:
This thinking and iterating process is how I took photos as a photojournalist from 1998 to 2003, and how I continue to take photos today, even though I use a very different type of camera. In my mind AND my mind’s eye, I have a specific standard that my photos have to achieve. If I could not get a good photo by my standards, I would not publish the photo.
It doesn’t matter what tool I use, because even the best camera phone on earth (currently my Xiaomi) cannot decide how I will choose my camera angle and know what colour palette works best for this hibiscus. I have to stand on the grass, balance my groceries on my left arm, raise my phone above my eye level and angle it down, then make sure the flower is in focus before I press the shutter “button”.
Then, I saw a few bugs running around the petals. I blew at them. They scurried inside the red part of the flower to take shelter and I saved some time with photo editing later. All good work takes effort, skill and judgement, and sometimes you literally need to huff and puff.
As I continue to teach Gen AI skills at my university and to large organisations, I am increasingly nagging at people to hold themselves to high standards of work. In the past week, I told off some students whose AI-generated images (used in their project presentations) had unacceptable typo errors and illogical numbering. “Can’t you at least edit those mistakes out?”
They were allowed to use AI for the project, but they didn’t seem to mind those glaring visual errors. I didn’t deduct any marks because I didn’t write that requirement into the rubrics, but I will do so for future batches. It was also a grim reminder that many people probably lack a reference point for quality work, since there is so much human-made and AI-made slop today.
So, I will nag to you too – please hold yourself to high standards of quality work, and like I heard one boss shout before: “Don’t let others drag you down to their low standards!”
What I wrote this week
People keep asking me why I keep talking about Google Gemini instead of ChatGPT. Well, Google and Anthropic have been innovating like crazy, and the web traffic numbers show that I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Canva announced many new features this week but I was most intrigued by Cavalry, a motion design app that they recently bought and have now released for free. I’ve always wanted to learn motion design and so I spent several hours getting started and making my own primitive motion graphic. As you can tell by now, I love dabbling into new things and picking up skills.
Because I love designing and creating, I recently designed workshops to teach fundamental and advanced techniques in Canva. I focus on building design knowledge and element manipulation first, then I introduce Canva’s different AI capabilities to create differentiated designs. Here’s the first batch from the fundamentals class, and half of them attended the advanced class a week later.
Anthropic also announced Claude Design, which immediately caused Figma’s share price to drop by another 7%. There has never been a better time to learn design in both traditional and AI ways.
But maybe you don’t need Gen AI to solve your problems. You might need to go for Excel class instead.
Ellen Langer’s Mindfulness book is still on sale for $1.99 USD. Just buy it!!
Another really mindful guy was Bruce Lee and his Striking Thoughts.
Mindless people fall for such AI Jesus nonsense. The pricing is hellish too.
BTS is back! But the language is not Korean.
When life gives you a naval blockade…