Somehow, I’ve made it to the 50th edition of this newsletter. Thank you for sticking with my rambling thoughts, my odd experiments with Gen AI, and I hope you like each week’s AI-generated visual.
It’s been three years since ChatGPT launched publicly, and you know how much the world has changed since then. I started conducting Gen AI workshops in April 2023 as I felt that many people would need help understanding and communicating with this alien intelligence. While the content of my workshops has evolved from teaching prompting fundamentals to more advanced techniques such as creating personal AI chatbots, agents, and apps, my philosophy on Gen AI has not changed:
- I fully embrace Gen AI for its ability to augment our limited human capabilities.
- I am extremely cautious about how Gen AI can cripple our limited human capabilities.
These two opposing views seem contradictory, but this has always been the way to deal with technology.
For example, in the 2000s, I was always puzzled about why people were so hyped up about doing emails on their phones while on the go, as popularised by BlackBerries (also known as CrackBerries). I prefer to write my emails at my desk and think through what I want to write, and then edit my words carefully on a keyboard.
BlackBerries are gone, but in their place are chat apps which people like to type on while crossing the road. Whether I’m a pedestrian or driving in my car, I’m always aghast at these people who are lost in their texts, videos or games. I wish they could see themselves, but their eyes are locked onto the small screen.
Will typing something while walking advance your career or give you a better life? Why not just stop and type? The outcome of what you type is the same, but the risk to your life is far lower.
I don’t need to go into the harmful effects of social media, you know them well. As Gen AI evolves and becomes more powerful, more people will become overly reliant on it and lose more of themselves to technology.
So, my goal remains clear – to teach people how to wield this technology, not to be subsumed by it. Stay in control, folks!
What I wrote this week
If you need a new computer, buy it now! Seriously. Memory prices have skyrocketed so much in the past few months due to AI datacenter demand. I don’t think Macs are immune either. I usually assemble a new PC this time of the year (every three years) but I didn’t because of ridiculous RAM prices.
This Yong He is not facing closure.
Google NotebookLM has evolved further to create excellent infographics from your content. Their new slide deck feature is also cool but you can only download the decks in PDF format, not PPTX.
Some people misread this post, thinking that I was criticising the use of short sentences. They didn’t observe the entire lame structure of the post which was based on another AI-generated post. There’s nothing wrong with short sentences when they are used properly.
I believe that Literature can be made less dry with some Nano Banana Pro.
Why make a Pointless Selfie on LinkedIn, when you can make a Pointless Tri-selfie?
A visual effort to combine communication, AI and my Christian faith.