Why I Will Not Choose Homeschooling Even with Advancement in Technology

Fred Wilson shared this on his blog a couple of days ago:

Apparently, homeschooling has been increasing rapidly in the US mainly because of parents’ concerns on the quality of the schools available, environment, academic instructions, syllabus etc. Of course in absolute terms it is still small relative to the total number of students (2m over 50m), but within the homeschooling space itself, back in 1990 it was only below 300k as shown by the chart above. Fred, who is an advocate in hacking education for the future thinks the growth is just going to accelerate further especially with the advancement and accessibility in technology. With VR for example, you can imagine studying about another country or state without the need to be physically there even.

As a mother, will I opt to homeschool my kids? The answer is no. My husband had a thought of it, he thinks he is better of teaching our son judging from the quality of teachers now and syllabus which will not prepare him the sort of survival, adaptability, critical thinking skills that are highly important as the implementation of AI grows significantly in the 10-15 years time.

But, because of AI, more so I think I want my son to go to school (currently inclining more towards private school than public) so that he does not lose track of human connection which you can only get by being part of the society. Because of AI, more so I want my son to be have excellent communication, persuasion, leadership skills which can only be acquired by mixing with other students.

As what Kai-Fu Lee, the AI expert said, we need to encourage our children to develop skills in areas where AI is weak especially when it comes to human connection. AI will never have feelings, will never understand compassion/empathy.

And for that reason, I will not choose to homeschool my kids.

How Today’s Readings Led Me to AI Superpowers

I love to reflect the journey on how I discovered things (which include ideas, theories, although most of the time people) that enlighten me, inspire me, engage me, which then led me or connect me to another dot, especially when I landed on someone successful that made me really curious about him/her, made me believe in him/her; essentially follow him/her online just to go through his/her mind/work/everyday lives. The latter sounds like I’m a stalker, but you get my point right? For example, how I ended up admiring Fred Wilson which then led me to starting this blog, how I ended up admiring Melinda Gates for her work on data and women empowerment, and many many more. I actually have a list.

Today, I discovered another person that will be in my “stalking” list. He is Kai-Fu Lee, a Taiwanese VC and most importantly an AI expert. In his capacity as an AI expert, he wrote a book called AI Superpowers where he focuses on how AI will save humanity and how humans can take advantage of AI instead of risking our jobs to AI.

So how I discovered him? It’s through The Algorithm newsletter I subscribed because I enjoy reading Karen Hao’s views (MIT Technology Review journalist). In this week’s newsletter she mentioned about how TikTok, the upcoming and rising social media platform (from China) is replacing our free will with algorithms. I got really curious about this famous app after learning that Andreessen Horowitz thinks this app is unique as it is the first AI consumer-based app. Even people in the US is crazy about it and it has 500m users already! I’m trying to understand the difference that this app offers vs. Other social media platforms which leverage on AI to curate what customers wants/needs. Apparently for TikTok, the product itself is based on AI. Anyway this is another story for another day.

From the newsletter, I clicked on Andreessen Horowitz’s blog to read about their take on TikTok and the rise of AI-based consumer apps. You can read it here. At the end of his post, the general partner of Andreessen Horowitz mentioned about the book called AI Superpowers, written by Kai-Fu Lee. Googled about it and found the author’s website and got immediately hooked.

Apart from his in-depth knowledge on AI, he also shared a quiz for us to take to see if our job is at risk of being replaced by AI and learn about our own human superpowers so that we can thrive in the future. I thought it was a great quiz and would highly recommend everyone to take it. Here’s my results:

PHEW!

The assessment about me is actually quite accurate I would say. And apparently it says I have a spontaneous personality which possesses characteristics that AI can’t imitate. See below.

100% agreed except for the communication part which I’m still working on it.

Anyway, that’s the story of how I came across AI superpowers and the author. It’s definitely going to be in my to-read list.

Malaysia Membaca

Our current PM has always preached for us to become a successful nation, even during his old days as our 4th PM and during his tenure of a normal citizen, ie not a PM, basically all his life because he himself is someone who reads a lot and constantly, like he said, chasing knowledge. He is already 93 and yet he is still chasing knowledge. If there’s one thing that the youth need to learn from him, is his tenacity and curiosity to chase knowledge, continuously. It shouldn’t stop after you finish school, or after you graduate from uni. If you stop learning, you will fail miserably at work.

I like the hashtag #malaysiamembaca. Let’s all use it whenever you post on social media about the books you read or just about anything, it doesn’t need to be just books. In conjunction to World Book Day, this book below arrived on my kindle as i pre-ordered the book last week. Can’t wait to read it!

Hello!

I’m back! Albeit 90% fully recovered. I need to be at my 120% best. Hopefully going back to my normal routine will help accelerate my recovery. There’s one more thing I feel like doing – running; to sweat all the toxic out. Not sure if I have the time today so we’ll see.

Like I said in my previous post, sometimes you fall sick because your body is telling you to pause. After recovering, I could almost feel a new level of energy. But here’s the danger, we always tend to over do things. We know moderation is key but as usual being human beings, we tend to ignore the benefits of doing things in moderation.

Gotta tell myself multiple times that life is a marathon, not a sprint.

Have a good day everybody!

A Much Needed Break

Sometimes you fall sick because your body is telling you that it needs a break.

I don’t think I’ve slept so long for such a long time over a weekend.

I’m almost to full recovery but still not quite there yet. I look forward to a re-energised me.

No Update Today

There will be no update from me today as I have yet to recover from my fever.

Thanks for dropping by nevertheless.

Building AI workforce

Feeling under the weather, so sharing a podcast by Andrew Ng on building an AI workforce.

A great 24 minutes podcast! Listen if you are interested with this topic.

Malaysia losing its attractiveness to investors, local and foreign

Malaysia has been crowned as the world’s worst major stock market ytd by investors. In fact they think that our market is really really boring, nothing exciting is expected to happen at least in the next 1-2 years depending on how pessimistic you are.

Last month, I mentioned that Malaysia poised to lose its home in MSCI EM index if we keep losing our competitive edge, as a result of inclusion of China A-shares which will just dwarf small countries like us. Read here.

Last week, the biggest sovereign wealth fund, Norway, announced that they are going to cut emerging market bonds from their fixed income portfolio and that includes Malaysia. Read here.

Earlier today, FTSE Russell announced that Malaysia is included in the watchlist of countries that may be dropped from FTSE World Government Bond Index, stemming from concerns on market liquidity, country’s fundamentals and market accessibility. This news is huge, this is a flagship index. Read here and here. Following the news, KLCI tanked to a 3-year low, a drop of 14% from a record achieved in May 2018. Last year, we emerged as the worst performing index in Asia. As written in this article, we keep missing out on global rally. Since start of the year, most major indices are in positive territory.

To the eyes of large investors (by large I mean those invested in large caps stocks such as those in KLCI), this is nothing new. There is no certainty ever since the news about our former PM’s scandal got surfaced, then there was little hope after the new government took over, but after almost one year, we are seen as still busy cleaning up the mess and people keep talking about it than doing real work (I’m talking about the percentage here, the majority).

Now the question is, what should we do? How should we be part of the solution?

A call for a more educated society

I had written quite a long post earlier about how social media has caused a wrong perception about someone I know very well. But I decided to pause and continue later today or tomorrow. It may be timely to do today but I felt that my emotions were driving my write up. I want to write when I can put aside my emotions and write rationally.

Relating to that, I stumbled upon this tweet:

The last tweet speaks it all and I couldn’t agree more.

I get very annoyed and to a certain extent disappointed with the level of mindshare of the society in my country. People rely a lot on social media to find information. If that information gets a lot of likes or retweets, it’s as if there is a flux of confirmation to that piece of information, more than rejection. And just like that, people are already biased. It’s called the confirmation bias. And people tend to talk about the wrong information more than the right information.

It just shows the level of education of our people, and sometimes the so called influencers even. And by education I don’t mean you need the highest level of degree or the sophisticated/technical degree but a basic level of thinking to decipher for yourself which information is right and wrong. It’s more of logical sense to be honest.

We need a more educated society. We need our people to form their own opinion based on the information available. We also need an environment where it is ok for people to correct the wrong information and perceptions whereby it doesn’t look like they are being defensive or even worse – people view as “tunjuk pandai, just because you have a degree yadayadayada”. Why don’t they understand that people with degree don’t look down on people without. It’s just that we want to educate and correct your thinking so that we all become better.

It’s ego I tell you.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to explain, once people are fixated with their ego and that they think they are right, there is just no point of correcting them. The energy to correct can easily being blown by the energy to condemn. Why is that always the case?

Marc Andreessen’s original blog

I blogged before about how I enjoyed listening to Marc Andreessen speak. I actually said “he speaks like a robot and everything that came out of his mouth are all substance“. Basically, I’m a big fan of him and he is a star in the VC world.

And recently, I stumbled upon his original blog. Had fun reading it especially on The Guide to Personal Productivity. I’ve always been interested on things related to career, productivity based on my writings so far (check out my Productivity-related posts).

If you are still in uni or just came out fresh from uni, or even if you are on a crossroad, I would advise you to read Marc’s blog. Here’s the link. He wrote this back in 2007 and the advice are all still very much relevant until now. My favourite is as below!

When WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Down at Once

Not sure what’s the main cause but one thing they have in common is Mark Zuckerberg as the major shareholder. Surely this calls for a break up. Or they cannot at least share the same server.

I can live without Instagram and Facebook. But I don’t think I can live without WhatsApp. It was down for more than an hour! It is the main mode of communication, sometimes ppl even response faster through WhatsApp than calls.

I checked my Twitter and saw this:

Thought that was funny. I actually did that too. I’m sure many others did the same.