ai

Back in the days when I was a "computer telephony" app developer in the early 1990's a client paid me to learn the latest state-of-the-art technology – speech recognition – for future application development. The way the instructor explained it, they used complex human vocal tract models, serial filtering algorithms, and heavy computing to achieve an industry bragging right accuracy rate of 80%, if I remember correctly.

And to understand what a full sentence means, they had to program in the grammatical rules and syntax structure and used more computing that resulted in even less successful outcomes.

Then came the big data and the neural network: All you need to do is feed the machines with a mass amount of human speech and their corresponding text and they soon learn to transcribe and understand what they mean with near perfect accuracy.

Similarly, instead of programming in game rules and winning strategies for chess or Go, just feed the mainframe computers with massive game scenario data and they soon figure out how to play the games at a skill level that exceeds the best of human players.

Such are the "bitter lessons" we learn in the AI age, i.e., in the long run, general search and learning methods that leverage computing power always outperform those based on encoding human knowledge or human-like rules. The "bitter" part comes from the realization that decades of human expertise and carefully crafted systems are often surpassed by brute-force computation, which is a hard pill for human researchers to swallow.

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As AI and robots take over the mundane and not-so-mundane tasks of the world, finding and developing new resources, manufacturing and delivering goods, creating and managing wealth, all with frictionless efficiency and optimum results, some say we are entering an "age of abundance": Nobody needs to work for money, everyone gets "universal basic income" and is free to pursue what their passion leads them to: be the painter or the musician you've always wanted to be, create a video game for yourself and play it all day long if you want, etc.

But am I not already at the "age of abundance" after ridding myself of the 9 to 5 work yoke and free to pursue whatever hobby or long-desired project I've always wanted to do, yet still feeling restless at times? Doesn't true artwork come more from experiencing deep human suffering than from an all's-well life? How many video games can one play before getting bored anyway?

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A world of "augmented reality" or "virtual reality" is looming large again, with Meta's new Vision glasses that can surreptitiously display the background information of a scene or people you look at, perform tasks per your finger gestures as if you were sitting in front of a computer rolling mouse around...

I may like to see text appearing on my glass screen explaining the history and layout of an old castle I am visiting, but probably not any geographical information of the rivers and mountains of a shockingly beautiful scene I bump into in a national park, when I want to dedicate my full sensory attention to the here and now while piping down my cognitive activity like a computer going dark into the sleep mode...

As the world of synthesis becomes more and more indistinguishable from the world of physical reality, both the sayings "we may be living in a computer generated simulation world" by Elon Musk and "the world is a phantom mirage sired by our vanity mind" by Buddhism seem to ring comically true and truer.

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I don't like using Large Language Models such as ChatGPT or Gemini for research, for the simple reason that they would "hallucinate", making up things when they don't have good answers for. They say the best (most dangerous) liar is one who speaks half-truth, but I think a chatbot who tells lies only 1 out of 100 times is 100 times worse than a half-truth teller.

Then there is "AI slop", people using LLMs and other AI tools to generate low quality, fluffy, inauthentic, and erroneous content that flood the internet, academia and workplace, drawing eyeballs while spreading falsehood, facilitating cheating and hemorrhaging productivity. Things will get better, say AI "effective accelerationists" (people who believe rapid technological advancement will solve universal human problems), as we are in a transition period towards a "singularity" point when AI becomes ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) that would self-improve and eliminate all the slop we've seen.

Before that would happen, however, we humans would have to clean up the slop AI creates – or, to be fair, the slop we make AI create – ourselves. Case in point: it is estimated that 10% of the software generated by AI through prompts (called "vibe coding") is faulty. It would then take a human software engineer with superior coding know-how to fix the faulty code generated by AI. Furthermore, to cut down the faulty code generation requires a human software engineer who is not only a better coder but also skillful in giving precise, pertinent, proprietary prompts that instruct AI to create less sloppy software in the first place.

If we want to stay one step ahead of ASI, we would need to move our human intelligence up a notch, to AHI (Advanced Human Intelligence), so to speak 😁

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Nvidia is the highest market-cap company nowadays because it holds complete monopoly of GPU chips, the essential hardware component for data center servers that form the backbone of AI services, just like Cisco was king of the nascent internet industry when its routers were the basic building blocks of inter-networks during the dot-com era. Then comes the news that Nvidia is investing $100 billion in OpenAI, one of its major customers, to buy/lease its chips to build data centers, reminding me of some major telecom company buying equipment from a "unified messaging" startup company that was doing similar technologies my startup company was doing at that time and ran up both companies' stock prices overnight, also during the dot-com era.

Are we in an AI build-up bubble now? Nah, say some analysts: these AI companies have real users (800 million for OpenAI), real revenue ($4.3 billion for the first half of 2025 for OpenAI), and the demand for AI is insatiable and growing exponential, the only limitation to AI booming is the computing capacity the world can provide, hence the justifiable build-up.

And even when the bubble bursts, some well managed companies will stay, as well as the infrastructure and truly innovative technologies. Thus we have Google and Amazon coming out of the dot-com crash stronger and better than ever, fibre optics high speed internet everywhere, voice calling through internet at zero cost today, don't we?

I don't have a crystal ball telling which companies will survive and thrive when the AI craze cools, but I think AI slop will get worse before it gets better, smart phone will remain the most popular AR/VR gadget people wear, "age of abundance" sounds too Utopia to be real, and a bitter(sweet) lesson I soon will learn is I will be able to take a self-driving robotaxi to LAX sooner than a bullet train from LA to San Francisco (if ever that would happen)!

artifice

You and I might not be consciously aware, but I think subconsciously we pride ourselves on living in a liberated world where traditions, rituals, institutions are no longer binding. Each of us is free to choose the career we want, the person to marry (or not), what church (or none) to attend, and ultimately, find our "true self" and "be authentic".

But what constitutes my true self, what is the real me? It is said that our body cells are replaced every seven years on average, therefore physically I am no longer myself every seven years later. Emotionally each of our persona is constructed through day to day interactions and long-term relationships with others. The language we use very likely dictates how we think. How "cool" we think ourselves are is really based on what most other people think coolness means. Take away all these third-party constraints and attachments, apparatus and allusions, we'll most likely lose our identity like a spaceship loses its bearing in a dark, empty space without any reference points.

Another modern day bias thinking we may have is about nature. It's easy to romanticize a bucolic landscape of serene fields and beautiful lake and sunset and think Mother Nature is all wonderful while forgetting hurricanes and earthquakes, diseases and plagues are her doing as well. It is through human intervention – cross-pollinating harvest plants, domesticating animals, developing vaccines, etc. – that we maintain our tenuous coexistence with nature.

Xunzi (荀子 316 – 237 BC) was a leading Confucian scholar in the Warring States period of China whose philosophy bases on the belief that humanity is crooked in nature: "Human nature is bad. Its goodness comes from artifice. It is in the nature of humans to be born with a fondness for profit ... They are born with hates and dislikes ... That is why people will inevitably fall into conflict and struggle if they simply follow along with their nature and their dispositions." ("人之性惡, 其善者偽也. 今人之性, 生而有好利焉 ... 生而有疾惡焉 ... 順是, 故爭奪生而辭讓亡焉.")

Just as they work to tame nature, humans need to work to straighten up their crookedness by practicing certain man-made behavioral patterns, i.e., rituals (禮教) that aim to define relational roles, build harmony, maintain order, etc., that have been strongly promoted by Confucianism in its teaching philosophy for over two thousand years.

In conclusion, our ability to create an artificial, constructed world is a good thing. Our potential to transform ourselves and transcend our natural state is a unique gift. Granted, it's hard to figure out the right "artifice" to practice to improve ourselves ethically, an eternal task many Confucian scholars and followers spent their lifetime doing. It's elusive but I think also obvious: It is the seeking of an astray mind 心, propriety 禮, moderation 中庸, justice 義, reason 理, the chi 氣, the way (Tao) 道. You know it when you see it.

ps, furthermore

This Portugal-Spain-France tour is our second self-guided long trip, following the one we did in Switzerland last September. The main difference, however, is in the means of transportation. While in Switzerland all our travel took place over their convenient, highly efficient railway system, our P-S-F cross-country travel relied mostly on our own driving.

​The European roadways are well laid-out and maintained in general. Narrower country roads and city streets than the States', of course, but neat and well-signed highways with smooth and even pavement that beat the riding comfort of some bumpy freeway sections in California .

​It's got many toll stations, though. Even though we had purchased the transponder option with the car rental company that supposedly would take care of the toll payments, it still took us on-the-spot decision-making to select which lane to go through without stopping, which to take a ticket and return it at the next toll station, and which to just pay with credit card, etc.

And you have to be skillful at driving through many round-abouts they put in place of straight traffic lights. Merge into the circling traffic at right timing, then pick the first, second, or third... exit to get out in a few seconds. Make a wrong exit, and you'd need to drive to the next round-about a couple kilometers down the road to round back to the right path. No easy U-turns.

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Driving through the European continent, I was surprised by the barrenness and sparse human presence of northern Portugal/Spain border that rivaled the wilderness of America Southwest, the vast and straight fields of farmlands in Spain and France, the rolling greens in southwestern France, and the tree-lined, cottage flanked country-road scene in Loire Valley that looked like a Romantic landscape painting.
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And there were people we met: the captain and his mate of the boat that took us for the cruise on the Douro River, the chateau hosts that provided bed and breakfast for our stay in countryside France, the village restaurant owner trying so hard to explain her dinner specials in minimal English, a young man giving us street direction in San Sebastian, another on how to take a bus in Porto, a supermarket clerk in a no-name little town letting us use their restroom, and a Frenchman who volunteered to translate between us and the train conductor when we lost one of our luggage on our way to Paris... People are kind and good-hearted, ready to give help if you let them. 
 

Like the Switzerland trip, this one was master-planned by my high school best friend Joseph and his wife Peipei, the best companions in a long trip like this. Together we learned how to explore extensively without overextending ourselves, improvise instead of being stuck with a rigid plan, and problem solving when things went unexpectedly. Thank you again, Joseph and Peipei! We are now two for two: one by train and this one by car, maybe we should do next one by boat (a cruise) 

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God bless! 

Be triumphant!

 

france

Biarritz was the first stop we made after entering southwestern France. It has been a luxurious seaside resort since the 1800's, with long sandy beaches and a palace hotel that was once the summer home of Napoleon III.

Bordeaux is a major city in southwestern France (and the fifth largest in the country). It has a city square surrounded by old majestic buildings and a reflective pool, public gardens along the curving river quays, and a small cathedral I felt particularly mystical inside. 

To the east of Bordeaux, we visited a medieval town St. Emilion, a hilly commune surrounded by vineyards that was designated UNESCO World Heritage Site for its living history of wine-making, Romanesque churches and ruins stretching along steep and narrow streets. 

  

​Further east is yet another medieval town, Sarlat, which has remained preserved and one of the most representative of 14th-century France. It is located in a region where foie gras is one major agricultural production and many small farms raise geese and ducks to produce products such as confits, pate, etc. in the area.

Continuing our journey north, we stopped by a one-street-town perched between a cliff and a river, and a 13th century castle that changed hands seven times surrounded by a picturesque field that was a no-man's-land during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) between the French and the English.

As we reached the heartland of France, the Loire Valley, we stayed at a beautifully decorated, charming old French mansion hosted by a hospitable couple, and visited a chateau on the river, and a grand garden that rivaled the grace and class – if not pomp and grandiosity – of the Versailles. 

Then we were in Paris. We stayed four nights at a hotel just minutes away from major shopping centers, the opera house, and the Seine River. The re-opened Notre Dame Cathedral was as crowded as we last visited seven years ago, so were the lines in front of the Louis Vuitton flagship store on the Champs-Élysées. 

We visited a Sunday morning farmer's market, 

a turn-of-the-century museum where a Moulin Rouge-like live show appeared right at the center court, 

a public garden featured in Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables, 

and heard a choir from England singing at a church that once held the body of the executed King Louis XVI during the French Revolution.

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For more photos and narratives:

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spain

Driving through the flatland of northern Spain, we stealthily reached a medieval town that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere and checked into a palace converted hotel in the dusk, and woke up to a stunning, golden lighted farm scene right outside our window.  

From there we visited a modern Human Evolution Museum that hosts remains of the earliest hominids found in West Europe, and a sunny city with a grand 14th-century city gate and a World Heritage cathedral, that was also the headquarters of Generalissimo Franco's proto-government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). 

Going north, deep in the Basque Country, we visited two coastal cities on the Biscay Bay. 

In Bilbao, we visited the Guggenheim Museum, which is probably more famous for its architectural design than its exhibits, and had a long lunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant right next to it. (The Basque Country is famous for its fine cuisine, there are a total of 33 Michelin stars, distributed across 23 restaurants in the Spanish Basque region alone).

In San Sebastian, we strolled through the posh modern shopping district to the rowdy old-town alleys and had tapas (called "pintxos" here) for dinner while watching people singing and dancing around on a happy Saturday evening.

For more photos and narratives:

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portugal

This 22-day-long, cross-country journey started along the southern coast of Portugal, going north through the country, then into northern Spain, southwestern France, the Loire Valley, finally ending in Paris.

The southern coast of Portugal is tiny but rich in history. It has a cliffside fortress sitting at the very southwestern tip of Iberian Peninsula that held military control of both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean;

 

a harbor city that was once the hub of Portugal's maritime exploration (and the first slave market) to Western Africa during the Age of Discovery.

 

Yet all is as quiet and peaceful now – except for the tourist crowd – as some old time fishing village along the coast where many international retirees come to reside.

Upon reaching Lisbon, the capital and the largest city of the country, we did a half-day walking tour of the city with a local guide, 

but stayed the night at a coastal resort town 30 minutes west of the city.

From there we ventured to the westernmost point of the European continent on the Atlantic coast,

and a mountainous national park dotted with grand mansions, old palaces, and a Moorish Castle snaking along winding hilltops like a mini Great Wall of China.

Porto is the second largest city of Portugal in northern Portugal, where we had the most fun in the country. We walked the city and learned the interesting stories and architecture of a one-meter wide house wedged between two old churches;

visited a "World's Most Beautiful Bookstore" that claims to have given inspiration to J. K. Rawling of vision of the fictional boarding school for young wizards and witches in her Harry Potter stories;

cruised the Douro River under six bridges, one of them built by Gustave Eiffel ten years before he did the famous tower in Paris;

wine-tasted at a wine cellar and learned how right aging process makes good Port wine that can only come from this specific region;

 

dined at seaside restaurants watching the sunset on the river and the ocean.

For more photos:

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