Hi all,
I’m sending this email to students in all my modules this semester, so please pardon me if you are receiving this twice, or even thrice.
To cut to the chase, please watch this video “The last advantage humans have over AI” by Dr Po-Shen Loh. You can go Google/AI him to see his connection to Singapore. He’s extremely smart and he articulates clearly what I try to tell each of my classes about how to deal with the new world of AI that we’ve suddenly found ourselves in.
Now the long spiel: I’m aware that such emails will often get ignored by many students, and the video may go unwatched, but it’s important enough that I’m writing this past my bedtime. The next 5-10 years will be so disruptive that none of us are truly prepared for what is coming our way. Dr Loh’s video helps to reinforce what I believe are super important things that people need to do but often dismiss as annoying nagging from older people:
READ. We all know that people are reading less these days. But why be like everyone else? Read widely, read deeply. You will see how history repeats itself even as new tech appears. The more you read, the more you know, the better you can articulate yourself. That’s actually the secret behind good AI prompting – a combination of strong language skills and domain knowledge. There is this false narrative that I often hear – “I’m a visual learner, I don’t need to read.” I can tell you it’s not true, because we learn with all our senses, and apart from reading, we also need to…
WRITE, because writing is thinking. The more you think, the better your defences against the mindnumbing effects of AI slop. What should you write? Just write in your journal, for starters. And when you feel brave enough, share your thoughts with the public through your choice of social media. I prefer to waste less time and just post my thoughts on LinkedIn which is THE business networking platform no matter how people criticise it. I am thinking hard as I write this, because I need to structure my thoughts so you keep reading.
CREATE. What can you create? Don’t think just in terms of creating content. Think of CREATING VALUE. What can you do for others that is truly valuable? Whether you can cook, coach, coax, construct, compose, comfort, or code, you will find out that in life, that’s what work is really about. We get paid for creating value for others, not just turning up for work to attend meetings. Then, that leads to the imperative need to be…
HIGHLY SKILLED. To be good at creating value, you need to great skills. Yes, many of us don’t know what we want to be skilled at. But don’t wait, because developing skills takes time. Ask yourself where your inclinations lie (“roughly, what do I like to do?”) and then find something to do in this area where people will appreciate your efforts, and then later, may hire you to do the skilled work. I became a journalist because I thought I could write, then along the way, I unlocked other skills (marketing, PR, sales, business development, managing CEOs, etc) as great teachers came along and imparted their skills to me. I didn’t have a grand plan to learn these skills, I had to learn them because the jobs I did demanded them.
Then you might say, oh the video says “AI is going to wipe out everything.” so why bother. But Dr Loh also says that your remaining human value will be in synthesizing new solutions to problems (does that not sound like our course definitions of “creativity”?) Without knowledge, articulation ability, the desire to create value and the skills to do it, you will struggle to differentiate yourself against AI.
We live in times that is both simultaneously marvelous and terrifying. Don’t be caught on the wrong side of history, and thank you for reading to the end. I will nag you again to watch the video.
Mr Tan
