In this week’s newsletter, I reflect on the topic of hunger, inspired by Shulin Lee‘s recent sharing about how Singaporeans need to be more hungry. I also recap what I wrote this week about the Singapore government’s drive to protect every worker in the AI age, on authentic authorship, why you need to keep your AI conversations fresh, subscriptions as investments, becoming truly bilingual, and why Claude is kicking Copilot’s butt.
Dear reader, it’s a long newsletter today. Let me first recap the week’s articles, followed by an essay on the topic of “hunger” that you should find interesting or very upsetting, depending on who you are.
What I wrote on AI this week
Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said at this week’s May Day Rally that the SG government will protect every worker in the new AI age. This is such a great direction and I shared some thoughts on the situation.
On Authorship: I think people are often taken aback when they ask me for my opinion on “How do we check if this content is AI-generated?” and I say: “Is the content valuable? If so, does it matter if a human or robot wrote the words? Did the human do the valuable work?”
Why you need to keep your Gen AI conversations fresh, like my breakfast veggies and fruits.
Why won’t people see AI subscriptions as investments in themselves?
I achieved a big milestone recently when I managed to teach both the fundamentals and advanced versions of my Gen AI workshops in Mandarin to working professionals from China. This is the culmination of a 10-year effort to improve my Mandarin.
Wrestling with image quality between ChatGPT Images 2.0 and Nano Banana 2. The winner is surprising.
Why Claude is kicking Copilot’s butt.
How to learn – I’ve always been fascinated by this topic and decided to get ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude to do deep research for me. I then condensed it into a post.
Always put a spending cap on your AI usage in apps such as Google AI Studio. Vibe coding can accidentally cost you a lot.
Writings about life
Why do we get drowned by negativity?
I started 12/12 intermittent fasting and it caused my resting heart rate to achieve a new low. (Which is good, by the way)
On the topic of hunger
Around 1998, when we were both undergraduates, I told my girlfriend (now my wife) that I wanted to be one of the best photojournalists in Singapore.
The passion was burning so strong within me that I spent hours each day reading books and web forums on photography and then applying the knowledge to actual work assignments as an intern photojournalist at Singapore Press Holdings. I loathed the old-school Nikon cameras and lenses that were issued to me, so one weekend, I took off to Hong Kong to buy the latest Canon professional L-lenses that were tax-free. I frustrated my friends when we went on overseas vacations because I was always telling them, “Hang on! I need more time to take a better photo of this scene.”
I graduated from NTU in 2001, and the first assignment that I did as a full-time photojournalist at The New Paper (under SPH) garnered me the Feature Picture of the Year award. The intense self-training and kind guidance of the Photo Department allowed me to achieve something unbelievable. I was fueled by an inexplicable passion and the hunger to learn everything I could about photography.
But in 2003, I quit the department and retired from photojournalism. Firstly, I refused to put up with my Photo Editor’s demand that I do photography and writing at the same time for all assignments. Secondly, and probably more importantly, my hunger was satiated and my passion for photography was largely spent. I moved back to the journalism department and refocused on my writing craft.
In the writing line, I got tired of having to cover crime and sad stories, so I asked my editors for permission to start a new editorial section on technology. Consumer tech was booming at that time with the iPod leading the way, and I wanted to apply my love for technology to my editorial work.
The bosses grudgingly agreed and I poured myself into building up the tech section. I knocked on many doors of tech companies and humbly asked to be put on their media mailing list. The tech industry took notice and started asking if I could work with them on advertorials and sponsored series. By 2007, the tech section was flourishing and bringing in over $1 million a year in advertising revenue. I didn’t get a cent of ad commission, but I was just happy to have built something from my passionate idea.
Then, I quit journalism and joined Microsoft, where I was given opportunities to learn and grow in so many ways. In the IT industry, I learned and did public relations, marketing, partnerships, web design, digital advertising, category management, sales development, and so on. In each area, I hungered to master the fundamentals and become an expert. The skills compounded greatly, and I was hired to run the Lenovo APAC gaming division which I helped to grow from $150 million to $400 million in revenue in three years.
Then as my friends know, my team got shut down after the pandemic ended and I decided to pivot to teaching. A new hunger arose – now I wanted to be a great teacher, no longer a business leader. The original plan was to teach my journalism and marketing skills to undergraduates, but life happened, and I’m now also teaching Gen AI to organisations and the civil service.
Just like I have always done since my photojournalism days, the first few hours of each day are spent reading Gen AI news and experimenting with the latest techniques or features. I try to do my Bible study first, but God, please forgive me, for letting new AI features get in the way.
Now, I’ve written the above because I want to explain the idea of “hunger” from my point of view. This topic became red hot in Singapore a few days ago when Shulin Lee spoke up about it on a CNA podcast and many people got really upset. I wrote a post about it, and today’s story is to illustrate the concept of “hunger” further:
🔵 You are either hungry or you are not hungry. Nobody can make you hungry but yourself.
🔵 Hunger for me isn’t about making a lot of money, but about doing something I like and wanting to be great at it. Hunger is for achieving excellence, not a short-term transaction. But of course, I won’t spend my working hours on something that will not pay the bills.
🔵 Hunger allows us to first survive, then thrive, then unlock unimaginable opportunities. It’s not like Maslow’s hierarchy where you get satiated when you reach the top of self-actualisation, it’s something else that you need to experience to understand.
🔵 Hunger does not subside with age (at least for me). It actually gets stronger as I reflect and think of the stupid decisions I made when I was 21 and how can I do it better this time round at 50 years old with any new opportunity.
🔵 People see and appreciate your hunger. I got to do so many things in my life because I asked my bosses to give me a chance to prove my ideas and then I worked hard to show them the ROI. Of course, not everything worked out, but most of them did.
🔵 Hunger demands utmost dedication, hard work, and sacrifice. I work every day, especially in the past three years when I had to balance my lecturer job, studying for my Master of Science in Knowledge Management (I’ll get my degree this month!), and running my ThinkTan consultancy and all its Gen AI training. And when I look back, I have worked hard every year of my life.
But I am never tired or unhappy, because I truly love what I do now and everything I did before. Hunger is good!