Short notes on what I'm thinking.

Human x AI

One of the reasons for current obsession in stress testing AI is to be able to form an opinion on what it means for different functions in AI era. I was in Product, Project, User Research, Design and rolled up into Digital Leadership function > Pivot into Sustainability for past year.

What does it mean to be a practitioner for each function?

Frameworks I'm familiar with are Lean, Design Thinking, Agile (Scrum certified) for more context. These are my thoughts at this point. Might change again as AI evolves.

I was huge fan of Lean Startup. To me, Lean Startup is a more complete framework. I always felt Design Thinking to be incomplete.

Lean Startup is still applicable in AI, what changed is how a release cycle should be faster. What might take 3 months to build and validate can be shorter. Concept testing now doesn't require a designer to create high fidelity prototype anymore, anyone can come up with prototype.

However, the discernment of a good prototype or bad prototype still lies with an experienced practitioner/agent.

Design Thinking is more important with AI because Design Thinking answers what should we build. Before AI, it answers what can we build with limited resources. With AI, the problem shift to now that we can build anything, what should we build? Can agents be trained in Design Thinking? I find this harder given complexity in human motivations, triggers and expressions. Example, when research participant is able to find a feature but expression looks confused the whole time. How will an agent decipher this?

At this point, here is what I believe

Task with clear right or wrong output -> Agent

Tasks with subjective output -> Agent + Experienced Human discernment of what good looks like.

Without execution, will human be able to hone their skills and thinking to reach a level of standards. I do believe there is a new level of standards and humans can get there faster now, because this is what I'm experiencing which these few months of AI obsession.

Am I Doing More or Less With AI?

Another reflection point: do I do more or less with AI, given all this talk about AI taking over jobs, and even the prophecies about the extinction of the human species?

Larger question aside, historical evidence suggests that most species has its time and space to evolve or to end. Nothing is forever. This isn't meant to scare anyone, it's just accepting that change is part of change. So, is AI a friend or a foe? My take is that it's a new friend with an unclear agenda, and even if it turns out to be an enemy, let's keep it close. Wishing it away won't do anything. It's here.

My current verdict is that I'm doing more with AI. Thinking more, creating more, doing more. And if a "job" gets automated, there are more jobs to be done. Work itself is being redefined, yet as a singular entity, I'm feeling invigorated.

Why clone your brain when you can build its opposite?

There is this topic about using AI and creating your second brain, I am unsure why people want to do that. It sounds so egocentric? If I'm Einstein, sure. Why would I want to clone MY brain?

I rather create an agent that is my opposite in everyway so it can fill in my gaps, check my blindspots and make my thinking and execution more robust. So I did, I feel invincible in thinking now. 😆

I'm testing a voice to text app that is created just to post on this blog to ensure that I actually post something.

It seems to be working fine and it's very convenient because I don't have to log in to anything.

This is immensely fun. I'm going to hit publish now. And you should be able to see the post.

Overseas

I'm in Fukuoka and Claude is not available here. 🫩 My friends say I needed a AI detox and I should take a hint. Well, good that I've set up a CMS just a day before the trip in anticipation for the trip. And when I do need access to Claude, there's VPN. Ha!

Anyway, this is blog is meant to be unfiltered stream of thoughts like a log, which is what a blog meant to be. I started blogging when it was manually coded on website and updated through ftp. This is like a full circle moment.

Notes on this blog

I'm editing this using tinacms. Configuration between Vercel, Github and Tina was done manually, with guidance from Claude. TinaCMS is alright, not the most elegant in design but it is supposed to be simple enough to get started. Something to get started quickly. The current solution allows me to easily migrate to something else later if I want to. I'm still in the middle of feeling this out and tinkering with the format and look. I'm also updating my progress as I go along, so I just need something simple to quickly publish my thoughts. The CMS UI is starting to annoy me and I might just build something myself. We'll see.

I'm bringing blogging back.

I used to own a self hosted blog. I lost all my posts because I didn't renew the hosting on time and didn't have a backup. It is probably mostly embarasssing and at some point I'm gonna ask an agent to claw it back from breadcrumbs left in wayback machine. Since AI has made it much easier to create self-hosted blog and I do want to see for myself what is the internet landscape like with all the tools I wasn't keeping up with and how do I apply AI on top of them. I'm bringing blogging back into my life. Yep.