APRIL 10 — In my idle daydreams, I have a dishwasher.
I spent three and a half hours on my feet cooking on a weekend just so that in the next few days my lunch will rely only on the ding of a microwave, which also meant a pile of dishwashing.
The actual cooking wasn't that bad, just the prep that included skinning and deboning a mound of chicken thighs.
Decades have gone by but there's still no easy way to debone a chicken besides asking someone else to do it.
Yet now my teacher friend tells me her students are making class presentations and proudly citing chatGPT as the source.
That's not how sources work, I said.
I know, she replied, with some anguish.
There are things in this world that should be fixed with a button and things that shouldn't be.
As much as I hate kitchen prep, it's necessary and some shortcuts do mean compromising on flavour.
Fresh garlic for instance is always better than pre-cut but I compromise a little by freezing peeled garlic cloves, saving myself some time later.
It matters little whether I use a vegetable chopper or a knife because the garlic will taste the same.
What also makes it easier is if I create a bulleted list before cooking where I write my cooking tasks in order, ticking them off as I go.
Cooking isn't just tossing ingredients together; there are skills and methods involved while still leaving room for improvisation and experimentation.
You also learn a lot about yourself and the task as you're doing, evolving your cooking to match your own palate or assuaging cravings.
That is how art works too.
You learn to write by writing, by getting feedback about your writing or whatever creative endeavour you are pursuing and you learn, too, from teachers who if you're lucky will be able to answer your questions.
To rely on genAI to create is a fool's obsession. You cannot really “ask” genAI questions because there is no way to verify whether it truly knows something or it just made it up.
GenAI has invented nonexistent cases for legal briefs, and written fallacies presented as fact, with too many websites propagating false information and popping up in Google searches or Twitter (no, it's not X) trends.
When I ask a writer or an artist about their experiences I know they have lived what I seek. A machine cannot comprehend context nor does it understand taste.
Still it feels like a losing argument when Pink Floyd awarded an AI artist US$10,000 (RM47,470) for an AI-generated video submitted to a contest.
Right now I'm fiddling with 3D modeling because it's something AI has still not figured out how to do properly and because it's just fun.
It's hard and having to restart, pause and rewatch training videos over and over because I'm struggling to comprehend lessons is humbling but I know that like when I started writing, there will come a day when it won't feel like hardship.
Still I think it's also important that we all find other outlets to stay sane in a world that is devaluing people over machines.
It's good to find things that don't rely on buttons like cooking or gardening, both of which I'm doing now because the hurts of the world are muted a little when you can spend some time tending seedlings or labouring over a big vat of kimchi.
AI should be freeing us from drudgery so we have more time to garden.
What is it doing instead? Forcing many of us to contemplate vegetable planting because greed is seeing corporations try to replace customer service, writers and designers with bots.
Maybe make robots that can plant rice instead because with how unaffordable it's becoming these days, even rice farmers can't afford to buy, much less plant, a crop that earns them far less than palm oil.
We should have remembered that when we were locked in our houses and missing just those small interactions with cashiers and baristas.
That robot barista isn't going to smile at you or pop a little extra syrup for you, their regular.
Save people; stop stumping for robots.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
