You can't automate interest

I recently watched a talk where almost all the speaker's content was obviously AI-generated. From the reams of rambling topics to the generic infographics, the presentation was a dreary experience of soullessness, despite the speaker's enthusiasm in reading every line he had generated.

Could others in the audience tell that this talk was artificial? I don't know. All I know is that we're going to get more of this vacuousness as many people begin to believe that AI can do the thinking for them, and all they need to do is paste the generated content on the screen.

That is why, when I coach people and organisations in effective ways to use Gen AI, I always caution them that they have to do the work first before applying AI to improve it. When people tell me they want to automate marketing processes completely, I tell them that they're going to end up with generic content that nobody cares about.

They don't understand what I'm saying because the process of automation appears to be more exciting than the critical outcome of engaging the customer.

What I posted in the past month

My students from WKWSCI NTU have written a news story about the plight of Myanmar refugees and it was published in the South China Morning Post. This is just one of the many stories that our journalism students are writing after we spent nearly two weeks in the border town of Mae Sot, Thailand. Here's a muddy photo of one of our adventures, and here's a nice group photo of us!

Advice for young people who dislike the toxicity on LinkedIn.

When someone tells me they are a visual learner, I react.

What Pastor John MacArthur taught me about communication.

Escaping the downward spiral, by Benjamin Zander.

Another demonstration of a human not thinking when using AI to do a presentation. This time, on a global scale.

I vibe-coded this multi-step app to process text and generate my voice.

Why companies are not seeing big productivity gains from Gen AI.

And how they should think about measuring results from deploying Gen AI.

And the missing word in AI literacy is "computational thinking".

How to unsubscribe from your unwanted email newsletters instantly in Gmail.

ChatGPT's Agent mode works pretty ok for simple browsing tasks, but many websites will need to be redesigned for the age of autonomous agents.

My "Frisky Chinese Translator" just became more useful to me.

Try interpreting your dreams with ChatGPT, but please don't take it seriously.

When your prompt gives you fluffy results, invoke the power of Gen X.

Hulk Hogan's death got me thinking about authenticity.

Contradictory marketing on Purvis Street.

Check out this factory building game "Shapez 2" from Steam. I like building stuff.

That's all, thanks for reading!