Writing | education | technology | ai & NOT A.I.

Hard to compete with AI – but maybe not (yet).

I have been reading, watching, and seeing that a lot of new things are happening these past weeks in A.I. It seems that most A.I. interfaces are connecting to apps and acting as “agents”. Think Gemini, ChatGPT, CoPilot, Manus, and probably more. What does this mean?

Well first, it means that A.I.s are able to do deeper things for you through your: Email, Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Calendar, and even Booking.com and Spotify. I’m not sure that it has access to make the bookings itself (I’m talking about ChatGPT in this instance) but it can refine searches better than and compare items in each of these to get you the best results possible. There are many more apps that are connecting or being enabled to connect to these current powerhouse A.I.s, but I am not going into them at the moment, nor am I generating this with A.I. in order to create a more exhaustive list.

Secondly, however, it also likely means that the inverse is happening.

We are not simply exploiting A.I., but it is surely exploiting us. We aren’t simply training A.I. on our search queries and our ideas, but on our life and our workings. What is the cost? Inherently, it is our privacy and our dependancy. In connecting with all of these apps, we are becoming entangled with it. It is becoming so interwoven and necessary that if we lose the ability to have access to it or have it act as an agent for us, we might become paralyzed with the inability to function properly/fully in society.

I remember hearing recently that someone who I work with knows of, sends out information about, and is at the cusp of most things A.I. but does not want to use it to complete most or any tasks. He has said that he wants to keep his mind keen and active. I have taken this stance as well in my last and more recent posts, in that I am generating these completely A.I. free.

I read somewhere today that the amount of information generated online these days has just past the threshold of more being made by A.I. than by humans. This is not just interesting and frightening, but also blasé. I write this because what it means in our current state of new information is that MOST of it is being regurgitated to us from previous information in “better” forms. Without the current advent of AGI, whereby information is actually being created, we are simply getting the best results of what A.I. “thinks” should come next. I am positing that no new, no original content is being developed when the A.I. is generating it in our current state.

Some may argue that this information is cross-tabulating and pulling data together better than ever before, and I don’t disagree, but actual original and actual artistic thought is not presented when we are reading, seeing, hearing more than 50% of the media created. AND – this information is being regenerated from itself even more. A silo effect is happening whereby a twister of information is coming back to itself from itself, which I would also posit is not in the advancement of our human intelligences best interest.

So, my call to action, from anyone who dares, is to create without A.I. The benefits are two-fold – 1. We continue to strengthen the general collective of synergistic, artistic, and truly new knowledge, and 2. We keep our minds fresh by connecting those synapses that, in time, will dwindle away if we don’t use them.

A mind at rest, tends to stay at rest, while a mind in motion will continue to stay in motion. Is that what the old saying is?

References:

Me – 100% – no A.I.

A.I. and NOT A.I.

07 Oct

Not sure about you, but everything, and I mean everything and everywhere I go is – A.I.:

PDs
Conferences
Emails
Apps
Internet of things
Girlfriends/boyfriends (not a joke – however, my wife is real – I think)
Every interface I use these days – Outlook, Canva, Photoshop, Seesaw, Nearpod, probably WordPress…all AI.
I was even upgraded from Google Searches to AI. Instead of asking, “Have you Googled it?,” It will now read, “Have you AIed it yet?”

Oh and hey…I just checked the interface on WordPress a little here…Yep, I can AI ASSIST. Oh thanks…

But, maybe not.

Maybe I want – and you want (I put that dash in myself btw.) for something to come to you fully from a human.
Lately, I have been talking with other educators about AI and the common question that I have been asked lately is:

Are you worried or excited for the future because of/due to AI?

My answer is two-fold and dichotic.

Some quick background about me lately – I am the head of digital learning at a pretty prestigious school here in Bangkok. I do lots of things like robotics, implement film curriculum, teach some teachers and TAs here and there, do a lot of parent presentations, and even develop the AI curriculum and help with the AI policy at the school. I am always reading about and trying to keep up with the on-goings of this artificial intelligence. I follow a few who inform me a lot and I try a lot out empirically.

If you were to ask me what seems pretty good at the moment with AI for kids, I would say, MagicSchool, Seesaw, and Canva. I am concerned as a parent and as an educator about ChatGPT and so many of the ways that AI is messing with us – or that we are using AI to mess with others.

So, back to the crux of my posit – my answer, as it were:

Am I worried – yes. Terrified. I have watched so many of the movies – Her, Ex Machina, AI, Terminator, and The Matrix. None of these appear beyond bleak. We are either falling in love, not being able to tell what it is, worried about it coming after us, or feeling like we are already a part of it. I am doubly terrified of some of the AI that I have seen in Black Mirror.

Ok, but I am also excited. I mean, I want to embrace it. I need to. We all need to. We need to learn from and with it. It is all around us and embedded in everything these days. Thank god for our fridges.

We are able to have conversations with past and current people, and able to have AI consult us. I use it before I ever send out an email and always use it to look over anything that I am writing (not here of course silly).

But coming back to that other question or statement about AI and NOT AI –

The reason I bring it up is because I think that people will still have a place.
Huh?
People.

Yeah, every time I have heard that people mention AI helped or AI made it, there is now a negative “Oh”.
There is a feeling of – ok, we don’t care then.

No real effort was put forth.

The music is AI – boo.

The writing is AI – crap.
Thank God I finished my PhD in 2019 – Pre-AI. I never was tempted.

The art is AI – WHAT? Who wants to see that?

But what about the other stuff? What about the medicine that is AI? What about the ways to figure out new complex maths? What about the new ways to make money through AI? Is this meh too?

I don’t know. But, I do know that I am on a journey. We all are. We are starting this out and possibly even guiding it. Let’s continue this conversation. I want to hear about your AI and your NOT AI journeys. This is a double-edged sword of complexity we are all on/in.

I feel that I need to write this now:

References

2025 – None – Me – 100% me. No AI. 🙂

1 Comment

Posted by Dr. Thomas Johnson | ict-design.org on October 7, 2025 in Technology

Tags: AI, Artificial Intelligence, Blogging, Technology, Writing

Books to read…

25 Mar

The following list are recommended by Daniel Pink and his readers in his book, “Drive”. First, if you haven’t read Pink’s book, put it at the top of your list. Because I love the insights and strategies Pink submits, I am definitely going to try to read some, if not all, of these books. If you have any insight about which ones I should read first, I welcome your feedback.

Daniel Pink – PopTech 2007 – Camden, ME (Photo credit: Kris Krug)

Pink’s Reader’s Recommendations:

The Talent Code – Daniel Coyle (This was just recommended to me by a friend)
Encore – Marc Freedman
Rework – Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Linchpin – Seth Godin (I love this author and blogger – This may top my list)
Just Listen – Mark Goulston
Switch – Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Delivering Happiness – Tony Hsieh
Teach like a Champion – Doug Lemov
Mastery – George Leonard
Employees First, Customers Second – Vineer Nayar
How full is your Bucket? – Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton
Wellbeing – Tom Rath and Jim Harter
Learned Optimisim – Martin E. P. Siligman
Do More Great Work – Michael Bungay Stanier
Start with Why – Simon Sinek
The Motivated Student – Bob Sullo
Good Boss, Bad Boss – Bob Sutton
Intrinsic Motivation at Work – Kenneth W. Tomas
Wooden Leadership – John Wooden and Steve Jamison

Pink’s Recommendations:

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Once a Runner
Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gols Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes
The Amateurs: The Story of Four Young Men and Their Quest for an Olympic Gold Medal
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Outliers: The Story of Success (I have read and recommend this book. Also check out every other book by Malcolm Gladwell. He writes with the same style and appeal of Daniel Pink)
Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet
Then We Came to the End
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (This may be second on my List)
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (This may go to the top of my List)
Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

The reason I am putting two of the books at the top of my list is because I have heard a few people talking about them. I suppose this is why I read most of the books that I do-either recommendation, talk around the water cooler, they are on a list for school, and now because they are on a list from an author who I respect and enjoy reading.

Personally, I would add Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics, Blur, and any books that Malcolm Gladwell or Seth Godin wrote to this list.

If you don’t consider “The Cutoff” you’ll hate yourself later

07 May

This is important if you are a blogger and you use Facebook to publish. After the Headline of your article, the next most important characters you write are the following 280. This is the “Facebook Cutoff”. Without getting people interested in your article in this amount of time they are not going to click on the link to see the rest of your article and hopefully peruse (read intensely) through your blog.

So, how do you do it?

Put the important information up front. Newspapers have been doing this for a long time, you can too. Look back at an article to see how they are doing it.

Don’t tell people something they already know. Why do they need to read the rest of the article if everything they are seeing is something they have already read before or is something they concluded about themselves.

Now, here is the interesting part: Test to see the sentence getting cut off at 280 characters is leaving someone yearning for more. Test the length in Facebook. Have you done so well that you have put ALL the important information in the first 280 characters that readers do not feel they need to read any further to gain insight? If so, rework the article.

Finally, do something I didn’t do in this articles headline, and ask a question. It might generate people commenting on the article, as they have thought about their response since they read the title.